Here’s a repertoire that everybody knows about yet is completely neglected: the Bach cantatas. Granted a few have gained some importance, mostly thanks to the vocal qualities of singers who have seized it for a few decades – Fischer-Dieskau and Elly Ameling to name a few – while some complete works adorn aficionados’ collections. There is however enough content in these cantatas to “make up” about a dozen Passions or Oratorios on par with some of those we already know. Bach himself didn’t refrain from drawing from them to recycle arias, ensembles, choirs and sinfonias. Among some of the most famous, honoured in the 1950s by Fischer-Dieskau, are two cantatas for baritone: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (1726) and Ich habe genug (1727), both written with oboe and string accompaniment. It’s precisely with this roster in mind that the Freiburger Barockorchester serves Matthias Goerne, a disciple of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and… Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, him again! The German baritone, a regular on the world’s most prestigious scenes, doesn’t refrain from lending his immense voice to this almost-chamber music by giving it a character far removed from the lyrical style required by Berg, Wagner or Strauss. In addition, still with the oboe in mind, the recording includes the Concerto in A Major for Oboe d'amore BWV1055R, a modern reconstruction from a keyboard concerto in A major, which there is every reason to believe was itself recycled by Bach from an older concerto for oboe d'amore. The remarkable Katharina Arfken plays the oboe for the cantatas and the oboe d’amore for the concerto. © SM/Qobuz

Organ player and harpsichordist, titular player of the Aubertin organ of the Saint-Louis-en l'Île church in Paris, where he regularly plays Bach in concert, Benjamin Alard is an unstoppable talent. Passionate about the world of Johann Sebastian Bach, this young man, "reserved, with an understated sense of humour", has undertaken a complete recording of the Cantor's keyboard works for harmonia mundi. The project is vast, and has never before been completed by a single musician. Benjamin Alard's very original approach is based on the idea of taking on this vast catalogue split into fourteen chapters, following the timeline of the composer's life, describing his influences, his travels and his professional choices. Every volume is to be thought of as a series of episodes retracing the life and works of the Cantor of Leipzig. This first volume paints a picture of "the young heir", whose music is still very much a tribute to his predecessors, such as Georg Böhm, Johann Kuhnau, Tomaso Albinoni, Johann Pachelbel, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Louis Marchand and Johann Jakob Froberger. The instruments used for this complete recording have been selected, thankfully, with great care. Recorded in May 2017, this first volume uses the Silberman organ in Sainte-Aurélie in Strasbourg, a superb instrument built in 2017, which benefited from a magnificent restoration in 2015, to mark its tricentenary. As for the harpsichord, it is a modern instrument produced by manufacturer Émile Jobin, inspired by models from Ruckers and Dulcken. A young man of his times, Benjamin Alard accompanies this complete works with an original idea: every work is recorded and published separately on streaming and download sites (like Qobuz), along with videos on social media. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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

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