“It’s very nice to be involved with this city that already has a lot of history from the 16th and 17th centuries,” Koopman said in a recent interview with Canada’s Radio EF. Of the near-20 performing ensembles, many number among Koopman’s associates.

“I see a lot of friends from Europe I know: Marcel Ponseele and his group, Il Gardellino [which performs J.S. Bach’s second and fourth Brandenburg Concertos at the festival’s opening on the evening of 2 December], and Kent Nagano, whose former orchestra (in Berlin) I often work with”. Nagano will conduct the festival’s closing concerts, a performance of the Christmas Oratorio to be given on 11 and 12 December.

Another major Bach undertaking, the E-flat major Magnificat (the Christmas version that pre-dated the D-major Magnificat by about three years), makes up half of the program of Les Violons du Roi on 4 December. The other half is Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum, written in 1743 at a time the composer was the toast of London. Canadians Matthew White, counter tenor, and Karina Gauvin, soprano, are among the soloists.

Though Bach’s music is the focus of the festival (even providing the themes for a couple of modern works in the “Bach and Beyond” program of 9 December –Brian Cherney’s Goldberg Revisited (2007) and Chasing Goldberg (2004) by Fred Lerdahl), his relatives aren’t neglected. Vibrant Canadian counter tenor Daniel Taylor leads Montreal’s Theatre of Early Music in Johann Christoph Bach’s motet Ach, dass ich Wassers g’nug hätte on 3 December, and the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal will perform three more notable Christoph Bach motets on the evening of 8 December, plus the motet Gott sei uns gnädig by Bach’s distant cousin Johann Ludwig, also a descendent of the Bach patriarch Veit. Johann Ludwig’s music, though certainly overshadowed by that of other Bachs, was known and performed by J.S. Bach. Montreal’s festival aims to figure among the great Bach festivals of the world, including the one in Bach’s own Leipzig, and considering its interesting programs and outstanding performers it certainly appears that Montreal will have little difficulty in achieving such an aim.