After having explored the remaining cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ancestors, Vox Luminis and Lionel Meunier have undertaken here a recording, accompanied by instrumentals, of these sacred vocal compositions. They are pieces that connect us to the principles of the “spiritual concert” (Geistliches Konzert) and that, through their multi-parted structure, belong to the origins of the sacred genre of the cantata. It was through Johann Sebastian himself that we owe the knowledge of his musical ancestors. Around the age of fifty, he felt the need to collate and retrace his family tree, most likely originating from Hungary where the miller Vitus Bach always brought a cittern with him on his way to grinding wheat. The works of the Bach family presented here represent the first of the sacred German cantatas along with those of Bruhns, Buxtehude and Pachelbel. We can hear here the predecessors’ works that led to one of the first similar works by Johann Sebastian, his cantata “Christ lag in Todesbanden BWV 4”, was considered for a long time as one of the first compositions of its genre. In addition to its striking likeness to the form of cantata eponymous to Pachelbel, this composition contains numerous elements which can notably be traced back to the works of his ancestors. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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

John Eliot Gardiner literally has a lifetime of intimate familiarity with J.S. Bach's six motets without independent instrumental accompaniment; he reports that as a boy chorister of 11 or 12 he knew the treble lines to all of them. That familiarity is evident in these exceptionally insightful and exceptionally well-sung performances with the Monteverdi Choir. The group lives up to its reputation as being in the very highest echelon of choirs worldwide, singing these especially treacherous works with almost superhuman precision, immaculate tone and balance, and infectious, unguarded passion. The singers handle Bach's exquisitely interwoven counterpoint with apparent ease even at the outrageously fast but emotionally appropriate tempos that Gardiner takes. He avoids the academic rigidity that can easily prevail in performances of counterpoint this intricate by always maintaining a dancing sense of lightness and buoyancy. The performances are also characterized by a warm intimacy. That's due at least in part the choir's remarkable control of dynamics; at its quietest moments the music comes across as an almost hushed whisper. That, in combination with the stellar engineering, creates the impression that the listener is being treated to a private performance by singers nearly close enough to reach out and touch. At the same time there is no sense of crowding and the performers have plenty of room for their singing to ring out brilliantly. Gardiner deploys a small continuo group colorfully but discreetly, offering an ideally balanced underpinning for the choir. Listeners who want to hear these small masterpieces need look no further than these exemplary and thoroughly engaging performances. Highly recommended. © TiVo

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

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

As in his previous volumes of Bach cantatas in this series, John Eliot Gardiner brings a velvet-gloved, yet iron-fisted approach to Bach. His tempos are supple and his lines are radiant, but the singleness of vision and strength of will are inflexible. As always, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists are both formally and expressively under his firm control. This doesn't mean Gardiner won't allow his vocal soloists considerable interpretive leeway. Soprano Gillian Keith and bass Peter Harvey are marvelously free in the duet between the Soul and Jesus in Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn (Walk the Path of Faith) (BWV 152). But the musical context is wholly Gardiner's. The packaging and production values are, as always, superlative. Recorded live in St. Bartholomew's in New York on the Sunday after Christmas, December 31, 2000, the sound here is ideally balanced, perfectly clear, and utterly natural. Unlike most volumes in this series, however, this is a single-disc package, and so it makes a good introduction to both Bach's cantatas and to Gardiner's approach to them for buyers who would like to test the waters without investing too much money. © TiVo

The "Bach Pilgrimage" of conductor John Eliot Gardiner, with his English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, was among a most ambitious musical project: a concert tour devoted to Bach's complete church cantatas, played on historical instruments, 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. This recording of Christmas cantatas was made at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York at the end of the precisionists' millennium (in late December 2000). The recordings are designated as live; they actually represent final dress rehearsals rather than concert performances (no coughing this way), but they do have the feel of performances in a live setting. The cover art of this album is striking: a picture of a baby with a dirt-streaked face, wrapped in a tattered blanket over a wool cap. The photo comes from Tibet; the baby is the child of nomadic farmers. The image nicely encapsulates the virtues of Gardiner's entire series, which is second to none in immediacy of impact and engagement with Bach's reaction to the texts. A standout here is Selig ist der Mann, BWV 57 (Blessed is the man), one of those Bach soprano-bass duets representing a dialogue between the soul (the soprano) and Jesus Christ (the bass). The soloists on Gardiner's set are generally not powerhouse singers like those on some of the competing sets, but he often elicits uncannily deep performances from them. Sample the arias by soprano Joanne Lunn in this cantata (track 16, for example). The language is purely operatic: "I would desire to die, to die, if Thou, my Jesus, didst not love me. Yea, if thou wert still to sadden me, I would suffer more than the pain of hell." (The translations here, and elsewhere in Gardiner's series, are annoyingly archaic and really at odds with the aims of the whole project; the German language of Bach's Lutheranism was meant to address congregations in a direct, personal way, not to cow them with archaisms.) But Gardiner and Lunn craft a form of address that is passionate without being operatic. As she answers Jesus' sober pronouncements, a performance of exceptional delicacy and power unfolds. The other cantatas are equally distinctive, and, as Gardiner points out in his wonderfully personal and always readable notes, "Bach has many ways of celebrating the Christmas season in music." The opening Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget, BWV 64 (See what kind of love the Father has shown us), is triumphalist and dense, with a splendidly transparent performance of the thorny opening chorus; Süßer Trost, mein Jesus kommt, BWV 151 (Sweet consolation, my Jesus comes), is quietly pastoral; Ich freue mich in dir, BWV 133 (I rejoice in you), is joyful and sunny. This collection of Christmas cantatas makes a fine capstone for a collection of any size of Gardiner's remarkable recordings. © TiVo

Valentin Tournet and his choral and instrumental ensemble, La Chapelle Harmonique (founded in 2017), are newcomers to the French Baroque scene. Here they offer their second recording dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach. This stunning album was recorded in the—almost too—generous acoustics of the Royal Chapel of the Palace of Versailles, where this style would have been unheard of in the time of Louis XV.This joyous and original Latin take on Bach’s Motets contrasts with more introspective listening habits. The six Bach Motets are difficult to define. They evoke searching questions with regard to their attribution and interpretation. Were they all truly composed by Bach? Are they intended for an acapella choir (i.e., unaccompanied)? Should they be supported by basso continuo, or even an organ and instruments?Commonly composed to honour the memory of the deceased and to accompany the raising of the corpse, they are works of incredible musical depth that were admired by Mozart. They combine a certain succinctness with a complexity of writing that specifically enhances the vocal text. The present programme also contains echoes of other works, particularly two choral compositions (composed by Bach’s predecessors and reworked by Bach). © François Hudry/Qobuz

For an artist with an extensive discography who specializes in music of the Renaissance and Baroque, it's perhaps surprising that this is Jean Tubéry's first recording of J.S. Bach. One thing that may have drawn Tubéry to these works is the fact that he began his career as a cornetto player, and these are among the few Bach cantatas that include cornetti and trombones, instruments associated at the time with Christmas festivities. These works also prominently feature the distinctive sound of the oboe d'amore. The three cantatas written for the Christmas season are not among the composer's most familiar works, but they are very attractive and should be of interest to listeners who love Bach and Baroque choral and vocal music, as well as anyone looking for Christmas music beyond traditional fare. Written in the first few years of Bach's tenure at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, these cantatas consist of choruses, arias, and recitatives on the themes of the Nativity and of the pious individual's response to it. Tubéry leads the instrumental ensemble Les Agrémens and Choeur de Chambre de Namur in disciplined but lively performances of the pieces. He brings a springy energy to music, particularly in the contrapuntal sections. The soloists, drawn from the chamber choir, have light, pleasant, agile voices well suited to this repertoire. Ricercar's sound is clean and atmospheric, with good balance.© TiVo

In this volume recorded on April 23-25, 2000, in the Georgenkirche in Eisenach -- the town of Bach's birth and the church of his baptism -- John Eliot Gardiner has programmed two cantatas for Easter Sunday -- Christ lag in Todesbandend (Christ lies in the Bonds of Death) (BWV 4) and Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret! (The Heavens Laugh! The Earth Rejoices) (BWV 31) -- two cantatas for Easter Monday -- Erfeut euch, ihr Herzen (Rejoice, Heart) (BWV 66) and Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden (Remain with us, it is towards evening and the day is far spent) (BWV 6) -- and two cantatas for Easter Tuesday -- Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiss (The heart that truly knows Jesus) (BWV 134) and Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergotzen (I live, my heart, for your salvation) (BWV 145). And every movement in every work is suffused with spirituality, from the dark night of the soul that is Christ lag in Todesbandend to the bright rejoicing of Der Himmel lacht! to the ethereal serenity of Ich lebe, mein Herze. Although there have certainly been other musical, beautiful, and even spiritual recordings of Bach's cantatas in the past and will surely be other fine recordings of the same ilk in the future, these recordings are bound to be special for a long time. As always in this series, no matter what the venue, the recordings are vivid and immediate. © TiVo