Max Volbers – new single (July 2025)

On July 11, the single “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” by Concerto Köln with Marie-Sophie Pollak, conducted by Max Volbers, was released as one track of a new CD by Berlin Classics .

This aria from the cantata of the same name (BWV 51) is one of Bach’s best-known and most ambitious pieces for soprano. Even more magnificent than the original—in which a solo trumpet accompanies the soprano—is the acoustic setting that Bach’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, later created: the music is enriched by a second trumpet and timpani.

On this new recording, which Max Volbers initiated under his artistic direction, together with Concerto Köln and Marie-Sophie Pollak, the musical dispute is depicted between Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Adolf Scheibe, which began with a publication by the German-Danish composer and music critic Scheibe in 1736 in the magazine “Der critische Musicus”. Here he describes Bach’s music as “confused” and “bombastic,” to Bach’s displeasure. Bach’s response, with the help of his friend Johann Abraham Birnbaum, was not long in coming – and so a dispute ensued that lasted for years.

Concerto Köln, Marie-Sophie Pollak, and Max Volbers approach this debate by juxtaposing individual works by the two composers as musical arguments in this musical debate.

And so the album illustrates much more than simply the music of two contemporaries. It deals with the aesthetic generational conflict of that time and thus addresses the transition from High Baroque to Classical music.