Common to all is a sense of being fleet but never breathless, with time enough for textures to tell. He can trace the most exquisite cantabile, even while attending to salient counterpoint, and although clear voicing is a consistent attribute of his performance, so is flexibility. Johann Sebastian Bach: Chorales: Weltlich Ehr’ und zeitlich Gut, BWV 426 . Butt’s flowing tempo for “Agnus Dei” prevents Margot Oitzinger from conveying the breathtaking timelessness some might hanker after but catharsis is tangible in “Benedictus” (performed movingly by Hobbs and flautist Katy Bircher). How far we have come in blurring the boundaries of previously polarised Baroque performing traditions. But the instant he touches the piano such information becomes irrelevant. Indeed, Harnoncourt is unique in his decisively pictorial and luminous landscape (in the more perennial oratorio tradition), alongside a highly developed ear for charting the work with kaleidoscopic, if occasionally maverick character. The only period recording to touch Podger and Pinnock for technical assurance is that of Fabio Biondi and Rinaldo Alessandrini, but in both sound and interpretation it is heavy-handed compared with the spontaneous musicianship and airy texture on display here, and rather meanly it gives the six obbligato sonatas only. It has been written for A2 students at King Edward VI College in Stourbridge, and is suitable for A level (particularly Edexcel) and first year undergraduate study. The experience seems to have drawn the musicians together and intensified their commitment. A famous response to Gieseking’s playing as being “like Monet in Giverny” was made with reference to his legendary Debussy performances. Bryce Morrison (August 1993). To embark on a second recording of the St Matthew Passion 20 or so years after an admired reading with many of the same musicians from Bach Collegium Japan might, one would imagine, have been governed by a specific set of motivations. The presence of a theorbo helps flavour the two concerto slow movements, the Triple Concerto especially where the impression of ‘leaning together’ is very pronounced. This is not, by the way, a polite way of saying that the performance lacks expressive variety or that performing standards are modest. She nails her colours firmly to the mast in her printed introductory note (which follows an uncommonly perceptive and informative commentary on the music by Mark Audus): her aim, she says, is a characteristically bright and sweet seventeenth-century timbre, and she declares herself less interested in the virtuoso aspect of the music, more in the “interior spirituality of the sonatas and the gracious elegance of the partitas”. 32. Bach created the Easter Oratorio for Easter Sunday 1725, although some of the music was shrewdly parodied from a secular cantata composed some months previously for the birthday of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels. The opening of the “Gloria” bursts forth with radiant splendour but also has a dance-like lilt, and with Bach’s intricate writing emerges as a compelling dialogue. The opening growls with the same prescient foreboding and authority of the very best accounts of the past 70 years, whether Karl Richter’s first or Harnoncourt’s final reading. You may not agree with the Freiburgers’ refusal to over-dot in the overtures but you’ll have to agree that, through persuasive phrasing, they perform these sections entirely convincingly. ‘When in trouble, play Bach’ – wise advice from Edwin Fischer to a pupil. Her C major Prelude unassumingly unfolds at a moderate pace, resonating less like a piano than a murmuring organ, while the C major Fugue sounds like a madrigal featuring four distinct yet unified voices with prodigious breath control. Phew, no he hasn’t.” It’s unusually large-scale and, among the best Bach works, demonstrates that no one expresses anguish more deliciously than Bach. Add a recorded sound which perfectly combines bloom‚ clarity and internal balance‚ and you have a CD to treasure. But if you haven’t come across him before I can report that he’s of Russian-German descent (shades of Sviatoslav Richter) and is 27 this year. For Wanda Landowska‚ they seemed initially ‘incoherent and disparate’ and it takes an exceptional artist to make such wonders both stand out and unite. The recording is superb and how remarkable that what are arguably Gould's two greatest records should be his first and his last.' As soloist, Perahia is his usual stylish, discreet and pianistically refined self. History has not judged kindly the revisiting of major Bach choral works by eminent conductors. For Gardiner, these works represent an endlessly fascinating tapestry of discovery which will doubtless continue to evolve, a body enhanced by the addition of Ich lasse dich nicht – a short motet once thought to have been by Bach’s great elder cousin, Johann Christoph, but now considered the work of the Young Turk. The tempi are often quite brisk but never excessively fast and the orchestra’s internal balance is especially good; in the two D major Suites, the trumpets uninhibitedly promote a festive atmosphere but are sensitive enough to allow other instruments to take the lead when their parts are more important. The clarity achieved in Nos 4, 5 and 6 also has a more natural air than the “studio-y” balance of the Archiv set, no doubt helped by the decision to use a violone at pitch rather than the more usual octave below. The galant character adopted by Butt’s elegant harpsichord continuo, Patrick Beaugiraud’s poignant oboe and tasteful strings during “Qui sedes” proceeds without pause into “Quoniam”; Anneke Scott’s sparky horn playing and Matthew Brook’s conversational authority conspire to take no prisoners, and the momentum carries through into a knock-out “Cum Sancto Spiritu”. As on previous Perahia Bach concerto recordings, the overriding impression is of intelligence, sensitivity and drama tempered by humility – Bach’s and Perahia’s. He could be brilliant in execution – his technique was second to none, as he proves throughout this set – profound in utterance, aristocratic in poise and wonderfully coherent in his understanding of Bach's articulation and phrases. Bach’s cantatas (nearly 200 sacred and a good handful of secular ones survive) are all the more remarkable when you think that this was real bread-and-butter stuff, produced for the church services every week. Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano have gone for the latter approach and succeeded brilliantly. Violinists have no need to envy the Cello Suites, since Bach left them an equivalent solo work: the Sonatas and Partitas. The high points are numerous: ‘So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen’, as luminously persuasive as you’ll hear (though Fritz Lehmann’s 1949 version takes some beating), Damien Guillon’s visceral ‘Erbarme dich’ – which grows in stature – and a ‘Mache dich’ from Christian Immler of grounded humanity. The tremulous confidences of Variation 13 in the 1955 performance give way to something more forthright, more trenchantly and determinedly voiced, while Var. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood (May 2013), Sols; Concentus Musicus Wien & Arnold Schoenberg Choir / Nikolaus Harnoncourt. This is not to say that their Brandenburgs have no distinguishing features – just that, where they do, they spring from eminent good sense, as, for instance, in No 3 when the two central link chords come attached to a harpsichord flourish which has arisen directly from the first movement’s final chord; or the abrupt ending of No 2; or any number of places where an inner part is brought out with the help of a generously drawn legato so that you are left wondering why you never noticed it before. Francis Jacob – whose Bach recital (Zig-Zag, 5/01) remains a favourite – provides considered accounts of two significant solo organ works. He points out that this is “a personal feeling, not a theory”, but it has to be said that once you know that he is thinking of the Agony in the Garden during the darkly questioning Second Suite (the five stark chords towards the end of the Prélude representing the wounds of Christ), the Crucifixion in the wearily troubled Fifth or the Resurrection in the joyous Sixth, it adds immense power and interest to his performances. Wednesday, January 6, 2021, 50 of the finest JS Bach recordings available, complete with the original Gramophone reviews and an exclusive playlist. If the strumming lute can seem a touch overbearing, the ‘Frenchified’ turns, manners and whims bring a delectable quality throughout. Any or all of these are things you may find in other Matthews; but you will rarely find the same careful relishing of text, which treats the German words almost as rhythmical and textural sounds in themselves rather than theological pronouncements, as in Hannah Morrison’s lilting ‘Ich-h will hier mein Herze strenken’ or the choir’s impatient ‘L-lass ihn kreuzigen!’. Slow movements are far from inexpressive, but again refreshingly direct: he never wallows (a good example is the introductory movement of the E major Sonata). Chorales also appear in chorale preludes, pieces generally for organ designed to be played immediately before the congregational singing of the hymn. To take just one telling example, go to 3'42" into the first movement of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, where Perahia cues a breathtaking diminuendo then boldly builds towards the recapitulated opening theme. No danger here of the final chorus ending in a morose slough of despond. Piccolo . 2000 saw Universal Music's worldwide release of BL! What is more‚ the solo cantatas on offer here are two of Bach’s most moving: Ich habe genug‚ that serene contemplation of the afterlife; and Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut‚ a relatively early work with a text which moves from the wallowing self­pity of the sinnner to joyful relief in God’s mercy. Interpretative decisions are intelligently applied; and Hewitt is at her best in the slow movements, all of which are played with the finest sensibility. It contains 149 chorale harmonisations (not 150 as is written on its title page) and originated around 1735. In the Adagio of No 1 and the Adagio e piano sempre of No 3 (where she is most intense because both remind her of Passion music), she omits the keyboard’s bass notes for the exposition of the theme but only in No 1 does she play them for its return at the end. Not that Pinnock need worry about that at this point in his career. Whereas the concerto came out of an Italian tradition the suite was, in origin, a sequence of French dances. CG 89 Ave Maria : Meditation on first Prelude of Bach < Gounod, Charles < FREE (115) Opus 68 Album for the Young (Album für die Jugend) < Schumann, Robert < FREE (108) BWV 248 Christmas Oratorio < Bach, Johann Sebastian < FREE (103) Adeste fideles < Wade, John Francis < FREE (103) Buy sheet music. James Jolly (October 1990), Emma Kirkby sop Katharina Arfken ob Freiburg Baroque Orchestra / Gottfried von der Goltz vn. The orchestra is as skilled and musical as you like in their obbligatos, and exquisitely responsive to Gardiner’s subtle shapings – the string accompaniments to Christus’s recitatives, for instance, normally thought of as ‘haloes’, have never sounded so alert to the meaning of the Word. Bach, Johann Sebastian : Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (Jesus bleibet meine Freude) (Choral of the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147.) The motets have appeared as pillars of the Monteverdi Choir’s existence over five decades, punctuated by a notable recording for Erato in the early 1980s and most recently within selected programmes during the millennial Cantata Pilgrimage. Each chorale is written to provide idiomatic opportunities to focus on intonation, balance, and expression, respectively. The G sharp minor Prelude is a particularly inspired example of Pobłocka’s controlled freedom and imaginative voicings. I enthusiastically endorsed a live archival 1984 recording of Chopin’s E minor Concerto in these pages last April. The chorales of Bach are much more complex than the simple style found in [1], but also Bach’s techniques can be made rather concrete. Both recordings include the two Sonatas for Violin and Continuo, BWV1021 and 1023 (for which Podger and Pinnock are joined by a discreet and sympathetic Jonathan Manson on viola da gamba), but Manze and Egarr’s inclusion of the dubious BWV1024 is not echoed here; instead we get two of the three versions of BWV1019 whole, with the glorious extra movement required to make up the remaining version added at the end. Levit will be stuck for some years to come with the epithets ‘young’ and ‘Russian-born, German-trained/domiciled’. Of all the great cellists I have heard playing Bach's six Cello Suites, BWV1007-12, either in the concert hall or in recordings of various kinds, Pierre Fournier came closer to the heart of the music, as I understand it, than almost any other. On the evidence of this powerful, superbly framed and exceptionally judged account, Masaaki Suzuki may instead have reached a point where, over decades of intensely dedicated Bach performance, a revisiting simply became a necessary rite of passage – as it has for many before him. There are, in a sense, two Perahias at work here: the first a non-percussive front-man whose evenly deployed runs are a joy, unlike some who more approximate a hard stick being drawn past iron railings. Perhaps not surprisingly, Stravinsky was beguiled by the possibility of its intertwining lines in his inventive homage of 1956, with its supra-polyphonic interpolations. Her final Gigue is a triumph of irrepressible vitality yet, throughout, you are reminded of the comprehensiveness of Argerich’s Bach, the way his alternations of robust and interior musical thinking are so tellingly and vividly characterised.It only remains to add that the dynamic range of these towering, intensely musical performances has been excellently captured by DG. Fermer les suggestions Recherche Recherche. Gould was not in the habit of re-recording but a growing unease with that earlier performance made him turn once again to a timeless masterpiece and try, via a radically altered outlook, for a more definitive account. 33. Those who have traced Suzuki’s Bach direction of the last few years, alongside a burgeoning series of enterprising organ volumes, will have noticed a subtle but interesting shift in the realms of emotional risk and dramatic thrust. However, the Sarabande’s simple eloquence plus the crisply pointed Bourrée and Gigue more than compensate. From this, he has found his own way with Bach – highly individual but never mannered. Or take the pair of Gavottes from the Fourth Suite, the first purposefully busy, the second a moto perpetuo of sinew and determination, but both having – that word again – a real sense of joy. Johann Sebastian Bach on Kunst der Fuge site: List of pages: Harpsichord. The musicians convey it with infectious zeal in the white-hot conviction of tenor Makoto Sakurada’s open-throated Daughter of Zion sequence (from No 19, ‘O Schmerz!’); illuminated by light and shade in the instrumental accompaniment, soloist and chorus combine in an essay of unbearably imminent suffering. As well as a slim booklet of essays and a complete listing by both CD contents and BWV number, there’s a CDR that contains Gardiner’s excellent notes as well as the texts and translations of all the cantatas. Well bravo to them. In the Fifth Partita (given complete) Gieseking shows the most subtle virtuosity and is no less convincing in the Sixth Partita’s more strenuous and concentrated demands. So we leap from the dizzying heights of the outlandishly difficult trumpet-writing that colours the second Brandenburg Concerto, to No.6, which gets its dark shades from the lack of violins. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the reconstructed concertos sound so convincing (especially the D minor), the trio sonatas go at a thrilling lick that surely no organ could keep up with and the sinfonias simply gleam. They are always a living feature of the line, arising from within, not stuck on from without. The final track is a stunning performance of the C major's closing Allegro assai which would bring any audience to its feet. How can it be uncovered without pressing too hard on the tempi or under-curating those reflections of discrete stillness? For encores there are Beethoven’s E flat Bagatelle from Op 33 and the Bach-Hess Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring where Gieseking plays with admirable restraint while not quite equalling Dame Myra’s own inimitable poise. Above all, Fournier's Bach playing is crowned with an eloquence, a lyricism and a grasp both of the formal and stylistic content of the music which will not easily be matched. Middle voices are brought to the fore in Variation 3 and where, in Variation 4, Hewitt opens boldly and softens for the first repeat, Perahia reverses the process. We then get another dash of cold water in the C minor Prelude and Fugue from Book 1. That recording was something of a yardstick at a time when the pioneering compact disc coincided with the second birth of the ‘early music movement’ in tsunami mode: Gardiner let rip, in short, with a towering performance of blazing choruses and oratorian solos, firmly planting his feet in the DG space that Karl Richter had vacated with his early death four years earlier. Butt has considered every musical connection, context, texture and form. Perahia never strikes a brittle note and yet his control and projection of rhythm are impeccable. To start with, there’s the sense of sharing the sheer physical thrill of Bach’s keyboard-writing. The spirit of Prades and Marlboro is here revisited, with Murray Perahia first among equals and the whole production infused with a sense of spontaneous musical interplay. David Vickers (May 2011), Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists / John Eliot Gardiner. With Levit, if you start at the beginning, you go on to the end; no question. Curiously, perhaps, it is the baroque cellist, Anner Bylsma on RCA who often provides close parallels with Fournier. Purists may also take issue with the tonal haze and mist resulting from Fellner’s liberal pedalling in the E major Sinfonia or, in the G major French Suite, the pianist’s soft-grained Allemande and Loure. Yet after listening to Sean Shibe’s magnificent new Bach recital, when I reach for comparisons I don’t go to other guitarists. Both are uncomplicated, utterly instinctive musicians with a sure technical command and sound stylistic sense, and in works as robust and complete as these, that is most of the battle already won. The four Orchestral Suites are supremely life-affirming music, fully realised here with playing that emphasises rhythmic vitality and poise, as well as giving inspiring expression to Bach’s wonderful melodic lines. If the listener is often left gasping, this is caused not only by vocal singularity of purpose but by the discreet and graphic responsiveness of the instrumental continuo players, among whom the bassoon here (and in Komm, Jesu, komm) contributes with knowing effect. Her tendency to push the tempo contributes to the fireworks in the outer movements: an admirable riposte to the tyranny of the metronome! Here, as elsewhere, her discipline is no less remarkable than her unflagging brio and relish of Bach’s glory. We have had several decent ‘chamber’ St Johns in recent years – including recordings from the Ricercar Consort (7/11), Cantus Cölln and Portland Baroque (both 3/12) – but this new one from John Butt and the Dunedin Consort really struck home for me by achieving its vital results without extravagant overstatement, overt ‘holiness’ or self-conscious marking-out of the work’s architecture. 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