C. P. E. Bach’s nine-movement Magnificat (1749), the first great vocal work from his Berlin years, is among the most magnificent sounding, in which the solo vocal parts are also among the most ambitious settings of the “Hymn to the Virgin Mary” (Luke 1).

The work fulfills all the criteria required for a larger sacred composition: grandeur, dignity, polyphonic and concertante choral movements, sensitive (“empfindsam”) and expressive arias, a long concluding double fugue. This richly scored Mag...