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

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

The labels lately established by performing organizations have mostly been devoted to new releases, but there is a lot to be said for using them to resurrect historical performances and recordings. These tend to be ones that have hung in people's memories for years, well after newer recordings have become available. There couldn't be a better example than this, the first historical release from the Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings label. It reproduces a 1984 live performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah, Op. 70 (as Elias, in the original German) from the Nationaltheater München, with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Chor des städtischen Musikvereins zu Düsseldorf. (The latter got involved because the Bayerischer Staatsopernchor was unavailable, but the choir acquits itself very well, unsurprisingly inasmuch as Mendelssohn himself was one of its former directors.) Sawallisch was noted for his way with Mendelssohn, to which he brought a noble Germanic tinge that makes a nice contrast with the usual English performances. He never did better than here, and upon hearing that tapes of this performance had been preserved, he is said to have exclaimed, "Thank God they're safe!" The soloists, led by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the title role and tenor Peter Schreier as Obadiah, are superb. Another attraction is the hardbound booklet, delving deep into Mendelssohn's philosophical place in German society (really philosophical -- Hegel and his dialectic come into it). The live sound from 1984 is impressive indeed, with crowd noise kept to an absolute minimum in a superb display of discipline. A wonderful historical reissue that catches the intense drama in Mendelssohn's oratorio.© James Manheim /TiVo

Emmanuel Despax returns to Signum with a programme of JS Bach transcriptions. The title quotes Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (“Breathe, Hope”), brought to Despax’s mind following the news of the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, where he had attended many concerts of Bach’s music as a child. Despax describes Bach’s music as being “of such clarity, coherence and expressive power, that it is able to transcend its original medium, and to some extent, style”. This virtuosic programme combines both well-known transcriptions, such as the mighty Bach-Busoni Chaconne and Saint-Saën’s Overture, with recordings of several arrangements by the late 19th/early 20th century pianist Theodor Szántó’s – featuring his monumental and uncompromising transcriptions of the Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. © Signum Classics

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

You'll need your latest smartphone if you want to understand anything about the latest albums by the wacky German organist Jörg Halubek. Under the GPS coordinates of the places and instruments frequented by Bach, we see Halubek, on the covers of his Bach complete works undertaken since 2019 for the Berlin Classics label, armed with a large black umbrella under a radiant sky, walking around with a cheerful face. 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.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 album is devoted to early works composed in Lüneburg and Arnstadt. It contains the Orgelbüchlein ("Little Organ Book"), the famous collection of forty-six organ chorales composed by Bach between 1708 and 1717 and published in the mid-19th century, a must for all organist apprentices worldwide. The other side of this album is devoted to the Partitas BWV 770 and 766 to 768, in which Bach's unique personality is already apparent. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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The latest album ‘Encounter’ by the German-Russian pianist is a particularly astonishing one, blending the diverse works of great composers such as Bach, Brahms and Morton Feldman. While the 2020 health crisis, due to the covid19 virus, has caused great anxiety among the general population it has also ignited the imagination of artists and musicians alike. Locked down in his apartment like so many us, the pianist Igor Levitt broadcasted a daily, live performance on his social media, even going as far as playing a 20 hour piece, Vexations by Erik Satie. ‘Encounter’, the product of Levitt’s self-isolation during lockdown, brings together an intelligent and pleasing array of composers. From Bach arranged by Busoni at the Palais de Mari, or the latest work from Morton Feldman for solo piano, to Brahms arranged by Reger, these are intimate connections between composers, as much as they are moments of solidarity at a time or great loneliness and isolation. Levitt’s poignant introspection and devotion to humanity shines throughout his album. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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