The "Bach Pilgrimage" of conductor John Eliot Gardiner, with his English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, is among the most ambitious musical projects of recent decades: a concert tour devoted to Bach's complete church cantatas, matched to the liturgical year in something like real time, and passing through the cities where Bach lived and worked but also stopping in churches in other countries. The funding itself was a minor miracle. His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, is the first name listed, but corporations also kicked in, and individual donors could help out with single concerts along the way. The recordings designate themselves as live; actually, they represent final dress rehearsals rather than concert performances, but they have that edge-of-the-chair quality that dress rehearsals sometimes attain, and they're not marred by coughs, creaking pews, and doors opening and closing. The performances are, furthermore, not perfect. In this two-disc set of Epiphany cantatas, rounded out by the motet Jesu, meine Freude, soprano Joanne Lunn is severely challenged by the devilish (sorry, JSB, but that's the right word) quick-triplet mode mixtures in the "Wirf, mein Herze" aria in the Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange?, BWV 155 (CD 1, track 4). Gardiner's overall treatment of the cantatas is quiet and reverential, and he can go to extremes in pursuit of this ideal; the bass aria "Ächzen und erbärmlich Weinen" (Groaning and pitiable weeping) in the cantata Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, BWV 13 (My sighs, my tears) is taken at a grindingly slow tempo and extended to a 10-and-a-half-minute length. Gardiner justifies this decision with reference to symbols of the Cross he finds in the score -- always a risky business. Any complaints one might have, however, are swept aside by the great virtue of these performances -- the intensity of the performers' response to the texts. Gardiner seems to put himself in Bach's shoes as Bach sought to find individual meaning in well-worn Lutheran texts. His observations, expressed in a sort of road diary that serves as booklet notes, are acute, and people will be reading them a century hence to find out what Bach meant to listeners of the early twenty-first century. (They're admirably personal and colloquial -- if you've ever wondered how to say "hair shirt" in German, you can find out from the booklet here.) What's really remarkable, however, is the way Gardiner has involved his performers in his creative response to the texts. The performance of Jesu, meine Freude at the end of disc 2 is one of the very best ever recorded, with absolute conviction from the Monteverdi Choir in singing lines like "Lass den Satan wittern" (Let Satan storm). Those who approach Bach's cantatas from a specifically religious perspective may well find these performances definitive, and they are, from any perspective at all, documents of extraordinary commitment and musical enthusiasm. © TiVo

With the John Eliot Gardiner "Bach Cantata Pilgrimage" series, as issued on Soli Deo Gloria, all recorded during a live tour and gradually parsed out in packages practically identical in appearance, one can be forgiven for some confusion regarding this series. Although this is Bach Cantatas, Vol. 2, and was recorded in Paris and Zurich in the summer of 2000, the two-disc set is the 24th issue in the series and was not released until the spring of 2010, patiently waiting almost a full decade for its turn in the release sequence. The Paris performance on the first disc features Bach's cantatas for the Second Sunday After Trinity (BWVs 2, 10, and 76) along with Heinrich Schütz's motet "Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes," which shares the same melody as Bach's source for BWV 76. The second, Zurich performance includes Bach's cantatas for the Third Sunday After Trinity, BWV 21 and 135, only, so the program is filled out with a performance of the Triple Concerto in A minor, BWV 1044. Soloists include Stephen Varcoe and Daniel Taylor in Paris and Katharine Fuge in Zurich; oddly, the instrumental soloists in BWV 1044 are not singled out in the package notes, though they are more than likely section leaders from within the English Baroque Soloists. Though top billed, the Monteverdi Choir is heard only intermittently of course, but enough to reserve its rightful place as the star of the show, apart from Gardiner himself.These performances are to some extent conditioned by the vagaries of live recording; the sound in Paris' Basilique Saint-Denis is good but not awesome, whereas in Zurich's Fraumünster Kirche the sound is clearer and has a bit more presence. An important part of the basic concept of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage was that each concert be given in a different European landmark. Alto Daniel Taylor is not having a particularly good night in Paris, but that's not too much of a distraction; overall the soloists, both instrumental and vocal, acquit themselves well although it's a little hard to hear the harpsichord in the Triple Concerto. All of the performances are crisp and professional, and there is something of a traditional aspect to them; Gardiner clearly prefers a romantic approach in the handling of the chorus and the band is a little bigger than a typical, one-or-two-to-a-part period instrument ensemble. If a listener is already investing in this series, then Soli Deo Gloria's Bach Cantatas, Vol. 2, should more or less deliver what the others in the same series put forth. However, if the listener is only looking for a recording of one or even all of these pieces, weighing one's relative options might not be a fruitless task.© TiVo

Veteran Dutch historical-instrument specialist Sigiswald Kuijken adopts a version of the one-voice-per-part procedure in this performance of Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245, using four soloists and another quartet for the "ripieno" or choral passages. Refreshingly, he doesn't even try to claim historical authenticity for this in the interview-format notes, pointing instead to the "extremely natural balance with the instrumental ensemble" and the "textual expressivity his approach permits." He even concedes that for a major performance of this work, Bach would likely have had larger forces available. If you believe that the contrast between German Lutheran chorus and Italianate melody lies at the heart of Bach's appeal, forming a richness unparalleled since Albrecht Dürer infused Italian color into the severe German figures of his paintings, then look elsewhere. For the adherent of Kuijken's approach, however, this St. John Passion merits consideration, as much for the unexpected instrumental details emerging from Kuijken's La Petite Bande as for the work of the soloists; alto Petra Noskaiová is superb, but the others are a mixed bag. The sound, from Belgium's Academiezaal concert hall, is a major plus. © TiVo

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“A great joy”: this is how Masaaki Suzuki considers this, his second recording of the St. Matthew’s Passion, made twenty years after the first one, in the Saitama Arts Theatre in Japan in April 2019 for the BIS label. A great opportunity to revisit the work, as in the elapsed time, the conductor and his orchestra have nearly completely recorded Bach’s choral music, including the complete masses and secular and sacred cantatas. As is his custom, Suzuki works with European soloists for this new recording, like the splendid young German tenor Benjamin Bruns, playing the stupendous part of the Evangelist. There are other familiar soloists that feature here, such as Carolyn Sampson, Damien Guillon, Makoto Sakurada and Christian Immler. There is nothing monumental about this new intimate and refined version, which follows the fateful narrative with great sobriety. There is nevertheless a fervent level of impulse, as well as a certain innocence within this resolutely pared back Lutheran perspective - there is never any real search for theatricality. The exceptional instrumental quality of the soloists of the Bach Collegium Japan and the soft touches of the two choral ensembles is also worth highlighting. © François Hudry / Qobuz

"The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the greatest works in the history of music. Whenever I study this epochal composition, I always ask myself the question: How can a work of music, which is performed each year in thousands of performances, has been scientifically and artistically interpreted for decades, and worshiped for centuries, remain a new, contemporary, and at the same time universal and supreme idea? It can be achieved if that which is defined as established and comprehensive, and appears or is accepted as unshakeable, is set in motion without capping the connections to the work itself and its musical- historical, intellectual and theological foundations", says Hans-Christoph Rademann about one of the monumental sacred works of music history. In November 2020, Rademann and the Gächinger Cantorey ensemble and chorus, together with an extraordinary group of soloists, set out to lend a new and fresh perspective to Bach's timeless masterpiece of raging choirs, intimate chorales, and emotionally charged arias, which, with its drama and pictorial quality, allows the listener to experience the well-known Passion story again and again as something completely new and unheard-of. © Accentus Music

The retirement of the knighted Stephen Cleobury as the director of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, in 2019 brought with it various valedictory events, including this Easter 2019 live performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244. The big Bach works aren't necessarily in the wheelhouse of the English collegiate choirs, but Cleobury and the choir have performed the St. Matthew Passion on various occasions, including at least once with Sophie Bevan, the present fine soprano soloist. All of the soloists are strong, obviously welcoming the chance to participate in what was something of a landmark in English choral music. Lovers of the Cambridge choirs will want this in their collections regardless, but how about general followers of the St. Matthew Passion and its performances? Certainly, this is quintessentially English Bach, although the all-male boys-and-men choir of about 25 members is probably closer to what Bach intended than the warmer small adult groups that are the norm these days. If you're looking for a sense of awe at the events of the Crucifixion, this may not be the place to find it, but Cleobury's careful work may grow on listeners. In a rather cavernous King's College acoustic, he achieves good separation of the work's double choirs, and the lengthy instrumental introductions of the work's glorious arias are sharp and full of detail that connects to the vocal line. Although this is not an intensely dramatic St. Matthew Passion, it is one that unfolds according to its own logic, and it will reward multiple hearings. © TiVo