You'll need your latest smartphone if you want to understand anything about the latest albums by the wacky German organist Jörg Halubek. Of course, the name Halubek is already a bit of an in-joke itself if one considers the journey to Lübeck (!) that Bach made in 1705, on foot, to meet Dietrich Buxtehude, the greatest German composer of his time. Underneath the GPS coordinates of the places and instruments frequented by Bach, we see Jörg Halubek from the back, looking out over the endless sea as in a painting by Caspar David Friedrich.More seriously, Jörg Halubek is a complete musician. An organist and harpsichordist, he also studied period performance practice with Jesper Christensen and Andrea Marcon at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, before forming his own ensemble, il Gusto Barocco, with whom he has made several recordings. This new volume of his Bach complete works, "Bach Organ Landscapes", undertaken since 2019 for the Berlin Classics label, takes us this time to Hamburg.Together with the Toccata in C, BWV 564, the works on this album represent the influence of the North German style on Bach's music. There are also some works composed before the trip to Lübeck and chorale preludes from his apprenticeship in Lüneburg. This project is based on ten historical organ builders who played a role in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered great suffering throughout the world, which provoked questions amongst artists sensitive to and invested in global affairs. This spirit of reflection incited the soprano Sarah Traubel to conceive her album De Profundis. The album testifies to a state of abandonment without salvation in a way that is both profane and sacred.Her programme almost serves as a description of the evolution of Western music; Bach’s music mirrored with atonal works of the Second Viennese School. The austerity of the project seems to represent a call for help through which one glimpses a message of hope.This small instrumental ensemble was formed for the occasion, in collaboration with the countertenor Andreas Schol. The theme of the programme shouldn’t be considered at the level of the works themselves. Instead, consider what these excerpts from Bach’s cantatas, passions and oratorios, whose influence can also be heard in 20th-century pieces by Berg, Schönberg and Penderecki, can teach us. ©François Hudry/Qobuz

With this set of 12 cantatas, a few of them quite short, Dutch historical-instrument conductor Ton Koopman approaches the end of his monumental traversal of the complete Bach cantata corpus. The cantatas here mostly date from the last two decades of Bach's life. By this time Bach had cantatas from earlier cycles ready for most occasions pertaining to the liturgical year. Several of the works here were written for special occasions -- weddings in at least two cases. The orchestration for the most part is large and varied, with several pieces including trumpets and tympani; the Cantata No. 195, "Dem Gerechten muß das Licht," BWV 195, features a dazzling array of strings, oboe, oboe d'amore, transverse flutes, horns, trumpets, bassoon, timpani, and continuo. The result is that these pieces play to the strengths of Koopman's interpretations: the warm, flawless blend of the Amsterdam Baroque Choir and the sharp differentiation of the instruments within what remains a big, festive sound overall. The famous cantata in this group is the Cantata No. 140, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme," BWV 140, with its "Sleepers Awake" chorale and its lovely variations on a pastoral theme. Sample the opening chorus (CD 2, track 1) for an idea of what you can expect in the various large choruses in the lesser-known cantatas in the set: each has its nice textural touches, and not a one gets lost in Koopman's expert interpretation. Hear the "Welt, ade, ich bin dein müde" (World, goodbye, I am tired of you) movement of the Cantata No. 158, "Der Friede sei mit dir," BWV 158, for an example of Koopman at his best: this odd combination of a bass aria with mantra-like interjections of the chorale from the choir's sopranos would throw a lesser conductor. The soloists in this set are also unusually effective. Soprano Sandrine Piau's voice is unhampered by the high pitch Koopman employs, and her soaring lyricism makes an effective foil for the unusual, rather English horn-like timbre of the alto of Bogna Bartosz. There is something a bit cool in Koopman's readings; for deep humanistic insights into Bach's music, the evolving cantata set by John Eliot Gardiner may be preferable. But in the public, festive music heard here, this lion of the historical-performance movement is hard to beat. © TiVo

Recorded live at Pisa Cathedral in 2016, this recording of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, is of a piece with the touring Bach Cantata Pilgrimage recordings released in the early 2000s: it is rich yet lively, sung with precision yet a total sense of commitment in the moment. The singers -- the Monteverdi Choir of 30 with soloists all drawn from the choir, except for Jesus (Stephan Loges) and the Evangelist (James Gilchrist) -- performed from memory, and the feeling that the text is being communicated directly is even greater than is usual with Gardiner. An unusual feature of the recording is that the soloists are not single per part; the soprano solos are taken by no fewer than five different singers. Several (try Hannah Morrison in "Aus liebe") are lovely, and the effect of a space between the congregational chorales and the focus on an individual soloist is fascinating. The hair-trigger alertness of the chorus in the big numbers like "Sind Blitze, sind Donner in Wolken verschwunden?" is also extremely compelling. Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir offer Bach with the luxury of old-fashioned Romantic versions combined with the agility of historical performance, and they've never done the combination better than they do here. © TiVo

“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 199 surviving sacred cantatas form a repertoire of masterpieces that defy comprehension. It's not just that there are so many of them, it's that every one is unique, exemplified by the seven cantatas on the third volume of John Eliot Gardiner's Bach cantata pilgrimage, three for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity recorded at Tewkesbury Abbey and four for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity recorded at the Blasuiskirche in Muhlhausen. The Tewkesbury cantatas feature a celebratory central choral sung by the strong-voiced Monteverdi Choir in Ein ungefärbt Gemute, BWV 24, a stately aria sung by lush-toned alto Nathalie Stutzman in Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe, BWV 185, and a dancing aria cum trio sonata sung by dulcet-toned soprano Magdalena Kozená accompanied by a wonderfully lyrical obligato bassoon in Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 177. The Muhlhausen cantatas are even richer, with the mournful triple-time chorale that opens Aus dem Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131, and the doleful chorale fantasia for soloists and choir that opens Wer nur den lieben Gott lasst walten, BWV 93, plus the blissful duet in Siehe, ich will viel Fischer aussenden, BWV 88, sung with pure, clear tone by alto William Towers and soprano Joanne Lunn. While listeners unfamiliar with the cantatas may initially be intimidated by the size and variety of these works, the sheer beauty of Bach's inspired settings will keep pulling them back. As always in his Bach cantata pilgrimage, Gardiner stresses the bright and hopeful over the dark and despairing even in the gloomiest cantatas, and he elicits powerfully affecting but rhythmically flexible playing from the English Baroque Soloists even in the dourest movements. Despite the change in countries and venues, the digital sound here is close enough to spotlight the soloists and distant enough to encompass the ringing chorals. © TiVo

The Bach cantata pilgrimage of conductor John Eliot Gardiner, with his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, began on Christmas of 1999 and continued through the year 2000. At first the musicians retraced some of Bach's steps through northern Germany, then performed in a variety of churches in England and northwestern Europe, matching the cantatas as closely as possible to the events in the liturgical year for which they were intended. It was an impressive logistical undertaking, supported financially by the Prince of Wales, among others, and the handsomely packaged live recordings that emerged from the project have taken several years to appear. This one is an excellent example of why they were worth the wait. There's nothing so radical about Gardiner's interpretations; he uses a moderate-sized choir at a time when the cutting-edge favors very small groups or even one voice per part, and his soloists, while more than competent, aren't the sort around whom a performance can be organized, as with some of the recent Bach cantata discs directed by Ton Koopman. Where Gardiner excels is in the pure human understanding of the texts Bach sets and of his response to them. Hear the almost sarcastic tone of the opening bass aria of the Cantata No. 181, Leichtgesinnte Flattergeister, BWV 181 (CD 2, track 6, the only possible complaint against the packaging is that there is no full tracklist other than the German and English texts of the cantatas themselves), or the militantly anti-Catholic and anti-"Turkish" (it's not only the Jews who get rough treatment from Bach) Cantata No. 126, "Erhalte uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort," BWV 126. Here Gardiner pushes tenor James Gilchrist to the absolute limit in the at first deceptively prayerful but soon over-the-top aria "Sende deine Macht von oben" (CD 2, track 12); Gardiner's conception of the overall mood rules the interpretation. He expands on those conceptions, taking into account historical and musicological matters, in booklet notes, based on his own journals during the trip, and these are in many cases worth the purchase price by themselves; they offer exceptional syntheses of technical and critical perspectives. Gardiner's Bach series isn't the most "perfect" available, but it may be the most profound. The sound in both these locations (one in the Netherlands, one in Britain) is clear, aided perhaps by backup rehearsal recordings made in case of fluffed notes or coughing audiences. © TiVo

"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 first volume in a series devoted to Bach's famous Cantatas with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir. The project is chronologically structured, so this first volume includes Cantatas composed at Mulhausen in the years 1707 and 1708. It contains four great and well-known masterpieces which convey the mastery and maturity of the young Bach, aged 22 at that time. Bach's sacred music written before he went to Leipzig, including all the works from the Weimar period, are often lumped together as "early" cantatas. This is misleading and ultimately inaccurate, since Bach was already 38 years old when he moved from his post as Kapellmeister at Kothen in 1723 to take up his duties as Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. In fact most of Bach's church cantatas date from the Leipzig years, as does the consolidation of the stylistic, structural and technical features of his vocal works, but even the repertoire composed before 1714 can hardly be termed "early". The works composed at Mühlhausen, demonstrating a striking sureness of touch in their conception, placed the 22-year-old among the finest contemporary cantata composers. Bach's earliest church cantatas are still clearly marked by 17th-century traditions. As well as the influences of older members of the Bach family, those of Buxtehude and Pachelbel the Elder, and Italian and French masters are evident, technically, structurally and stylistically. A particularly characteristic feature of the pre-Leipzig cantatas is Bach's exceptional delight in experimental and complex handling of an extremely wide range of instruments, with refined sound effects (such as the use of the bassoon) and poly- and homophonic settings and forms. © Challenge Records