Johann Christian Friedrich Bach has been rather talked down by historians, as much, I suspect, because of his utterly uneventful life (spent at the minor court of Buckeburg) as for the alleged blandness of his music. His penchant was certainly for the lyrical rather than the dramatic, and he was uninterested in bold harmonies or startling effects; but his combination of Italian suavity, Empfindsamkeit and North German polyphonic training lent him an individual voice. His 1773 oratorio The Infancy of Jesus, to a text by Herder, caused his patron’s wife to declare that she was “transported by this heavenly music” (which, incidentally, can be heard on Capriccio (CD) 10 292). In that same year the lady was devastated by the death of her twin brother, and as a gesture of consolation Herder and Friedrich wrote this Resurrection of Lazarus.
The deeply expressive arias of its first part (Birgit Finnila singing beautifully in the role of Lazarus’s grieving sister) at once upsets the received view of the composer; and after a vividly represented raising of Lazarus an effective touch is a change from the prevailing minor tonality to the major, and the addition of flutes (and, later, oboes and horns) to the strings and organ employed up to that point. There is a surprise at the end: instead of concluding with a chorus or a chorale (one of five), there is an extended aria for the tenor, now representing not Lazarus but a Christian believer. This would have made a deeper impression had it not been sung ff throughout; and a somewhat similar charge has to be levelled at the conductor, who for too much of the time is content to leave both chorus and orchestra at one unvaryingly loud dynamic level. Despite this insensitivity, this is a work that deserves to be heard, as modifying the conventional opinion of Bach’s second youngest son.'