Taken from several live performances at the Gasteig in Munich in early 2023, this recording of Wagner's Siegfried made classical best-seller charts later that year. It is part of a series that began in 2016, intending to record the entire Ring Cycle live. The recordings have all been successful, and this is testimony to the skills of conductor Simon Rattle. There are conductors' Wagner performances, and there are singers' Wagner performances. This is the former. The Bavarian Radio Symphony seizes the listener's attention from the opening bell, and the energy never flags. There is nothing objectionable about the singers, but few of them will stick in one's head. The exception, perhaps, is soprano Anja Kampe as Brunnhilde (and Danae Kontora as the Voice of the Forest Bird); Kampe, of course, doesn't enter until the end, but at that point, everything comes together for a really thrilling conclusion of "radiant love, laughing death." Although these were live performances, they might just as well have been made in a studio; Bavarian Radio's engineering in its hometown is superbly detailed, and the audience discipline is awesome (no applause or other crowd noise of any kind is retained). There is a liveliness to Rattle's Wagner that sets it apart from performances in the German tradition, and it is fully on display in this recording.© James Manheim /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

Aside from the gargantuan logistical problems of moving a chamber orchestra, chorus, soloists, and conductor, plus recording equipment with engineers and producers every week, the aesthetic challenges of John Eliot Gardiner's Bach cantata pilgrimage must have been colossal. Imagine: every week the musicians had to prepare and present three or more cantatas in performances that would bear repeated listenings at home. And yet Gardiner and his forces seem to have succeeded every time. In the two-disc volume 25 of the series, Gardiner includes three cantatas for the fifth Sunday after Easter and three for the Sunday after Ascension Day, and, as always before, they succeed in not only performing the works with smooth professionalism but also ardent enthusiasm. Take just In allen meinen Taten, BWV 97. Its nine movements are wonderfully varied in tone and setting, but also totally unified through musical means. Gardiner and his forces capture both the variety and the unity of the work. Bass Stephen Loges' melancholy aria "Es kan mir nichts" with obbligato bassoon, tenor Steven Davislim's jaunty aria "Ich trause" with virtuoso solo violin, alto Robin Tyson's haunting recitative Er wolle meiner Sünden, and soprano Katharine Fuge's joyous aria "Ihm hab ich mich ergeben" with a pair of obbligato oboes all form part of an organic whole here. Recorded in vivid sound, these performances will be mandatory listening for anyone who reveres Bach's cantatas. © TiVo

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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

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

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