For the First Sunday after Easter, John Eliot Gardiner and his Bach cantata pilgrimage took themselves to the Johann Sebastian-Bach-Kirche in Arnstadt, Thuringia -- so named because it was the 18-year-old Bach's first professional post -- to perform and record four cantatas on April 29 and 30, 2000: Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (Unto Thee, Lord, do I lift up my soul) (BWV 150), Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ (Remember that Jesus Christ) (BWV 67), Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats (Then the same day at evening) (BWV 42), and Der Friede sei mit dir (Peace be with you) (BWV 158). With his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, plus soprano Gillian Keith, alto Daniel Taylor, tenor Charles Daniels, and bass Stephen Varcoe, Gardiner paints a colorful, devotional portrait of Bach as a young Lutheran composer eager to prove his musical skill and his spiritual commitment. For the Second Sunday after Easter, Gardiner and his Pilgrimage went west to the Basilique St. Willibrord in Echternach, Luxembourg -- an eleventh century abbey rebuilt as a modern twentieth century church after its near complete destruction in the Second World War -- to perform and record three cantatas on May 7, 2000: Du Hirte Israel, höre (You shepherd of Israel, hear us) (BWV 104), Ich bin ein guter Hirt (I am the faithful shepherd) (BWV 85), and Der Herr is mein getreuer Hirt (The Lord is my true shepherd) (BWV 112). With the Choir and Soloists plus soprano Katherine Fuge, alto William Towers, tenor Norbert Meyn, and, once again bass Stephen Varcoe, Gardiner illuminates Bach's three views of the 23rd Psalm. As always in this superlative series, Gardiner leads performances that are consummately musical, supremely spiritual, and immensely compelling, and no matter what the age or shape of the venue, SDG Records and Monteverdi Productions grant them clean, direct, and vivid sound. © TiVo

Stephan MacLeod wears both his singer and conductor hats for this programme of showcasing J. S. Bach’s treatment of the oboe and the bass voice, two instruments Bach appears to have known intimately. With the oboe, both the oboe da caccia and the oboe d’amore first appeared in Leipzig while Bach was working there, and the body of music he produced for them covers a notably wide range of technical, sonic and expressive capabilities. With the bass voice, this appears to have been Bach’s own vocal type, and his treatment of it is interesting because not only did he put it to a wide variety of dramatic uses, portraying characters from thundering preachers to desperate Christians, but it was also one he appears to have spotted a particular area of expressive strength for: it was the tessitura he used for Christ in the Passions, and for the evocation of God in certain cantatas; then zero in on the four surviving solo bass cantatas presented here, and no fewer than three of them – BWV 56, BWV 82 and BWV 158 – are concerned with portraying death as a hope-filled release from the struggles of the earthly body. To deal with those three cantatas first, the closeness of the relationship here between MacLeod and his period-instrument Gli Angeli Genève is palpable, set off further by his big, rich and rounded vocal tones being a highly complementary foil for the ensemble’s crisply articulated, warm-toned sound; and MacLeod’s delivery of the texts is also all one could hope for, imbued with understanding lightly worn. The oboe element is no less enjoyable, with BWV 56’s aria of closely intertwined bass and oboe lines, ”Endlich, endlich wird mein Joch” , one of the recital’s stand-out moments for the pleasure-filled intimacy between MacLeod and oboist Emmanuel Laporte. The Cantata BWV 203, “Amore, traditore”, is then an entirely different musical beast. Set to simple harpsichord accompaniment, this one is operatic in tone, and with a secular Italian text relating to an amorous deception. It isn’t even indisputably by Bach, given that it survives only via nineteenth-century copies – although musicologists have suggested 1720 (Bach’s Köthen period) as a credible date. Either way, though, here it serves as a delicious final palette-cleanser, MacLeod and harpsichordist Bertrand Cuiller serving up an elegantly sparkling double-act of spry keyboard passagework and subtly operatic vocal drama, complete with some gloriously pizazz-filled flourishes from Cuiller at the aria’s conclusion; and the generous acoustic of the Landgasthof Riehen Grosser Festsall makes its own fine contribution. Great stuff. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

With its forty-five chorale preludes, the Orgelbüchlein bears witness to a mastery of the art of improvisation on the organ, as the congregation heard it at the time before singing the hymn in its turn. It was a tempting experiment to revive this primary function: by collaborating with the combined forces of the Ensemble Vocal Bergamasque and the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, Benjamin Alard gives the "little organ book" its full significance and expressive power. © harmonia mundi

Anna Prohaska asked Wolfgang Katschner and the Lautten Compagney at the outset of the coronavirus crisis whether they shouldn’t spontaneously organize a musical get-together in this period. This has now resulted in "Redemption". This is a sequence of music selected solely from Bach cantatas, compiled in keeping with the aforenamed conceptual association. "Redemption" has multiple meanings, for instance: can music give us consolation in times of sickness and crisis; can it open up emotional and contemplative spaces for us; is it redemptive for musicians to be the “instruments” in engendering music and therefore spirituality… ? Besides Anna Prohaska as soloist and three other singers, "Redemption" features a larger group of musicians – around twenty instrumentalists. These musicians serve a dual role: they expertly accompany the arias that Anna Prohaska sings and they also represent the concept of human interaction and a shared collective experience which has been missing during these times. © Alpha Classics

“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

Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, consists of a set of six cantatas, each with recitatives, arias, and chorales. Moreover, some of the music for this most solemn of Christian events was borrowed by Bach from his own secular compositions. Yet it is a unified work, designated by Bach himself as an oratorio, and the biblical narration of the Christmas story is worked into the usual recitative-aria structure. There aren't any melodies in the work that are really among Bach's greatest hits, but the ingenuity of the work as a whole lies in the way it's somehow greater than the sum of its parts. That's the appeal of this version by conductor Stephen Layton, four of his favored soloists, the Choir of Trinity College, and the period-instrument Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: it respects the small scale of the parts but treats the whole with the weight it deserves. Credit for the balance must go to Layton, who has gotten splendid results from the youthful Cambridge choristers in a variety of common repertory works. They enunciate clearly, hit the pitches precisely, and generally seem excited by what they're doing. The always lively Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is a perfect partner for the choir, and the soloists engage with the text and convey the feeling that they're in the ballpark of the ones who originally performed the work. There are more daring performances of the Christmas Oratorio on all fronts, but few that make such a satisfying and musical impression.© 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

In 1991, Philippe Herreweghe and La Chapelle Royale recorded three Bach cantatas on the themes of suffering and death – death viewed as a kindly comforter. The soloist was the prodigious bass Peter Kooy, a longstanding partner of the ensemble and a key figure in its magnificent survey of Bach’s cantatas, motets and Passions. A major milestone in the discography. © harmonia mundi

"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

What is it about volume 26 of John Eliot Gardiner's cycle of the complete Bach cantatas that makes it special? Is it the works? All seven cantatas on this two-disc set have their individual beauties, but the last -- Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte, BWV 174 -- starts with a magnificent Sinfonia based on the opening movement of the Third Brandenburg Concerto, only with oboes, horns, and organ, and thus has the added benefit of instant recognition. Is it the performances? As always, Gardiner obtains a bright tone and a robust performance from the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, an approach that brings out the best in these seven mostly celebratory works. Or is it the sometimes out-of-tune singing and the occasionally out-of-tune playing? Most of the soloists are fine -- particularly cheerful soprano Lisa Larsson and chesty alto Nathalie Stutzmann -- and some are excellent -- especially soulful tenor Christoph Genz -- but they, along with the choir, do sometimes slip out of tune. And while most of the playing is first rate -- check out the clarity of the strings and the taste of the continuo -- there are moments when the strings or the winds slid out of tune. Still, since these are all live performances recorded with amazing clarity and presence at Holy Trinity Church in Long Melford in June 2000, these flaws are fairly insignificant compared with the performances' many strengths, and anyone who has enjoyed Gardiner's joyful and direct approach to Bach's cantatas will surely enjoy volume 26. © TiVo

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