Bach Easter

After the completion of the magisterial touring sequence of Bach cantatas from conductor John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, it seems that the prolific music-making will continue with non-cantata works. This strong recording of Bach's Easter Oratorio, BWV 249, was released just in time for the 2014 Easter holiday and should find the same demand as the rest of Gardiner's output. The Easter Oratorio is more an oversized cantata than a full-scale treatment with narrator, chorus, and soloists in the manner of Bach's other large religious works; it has no narrating Evangelist, consists mostly of solos in dialogue with each other, and apparently was actually adapted from an earlier pastoral birthday cantata.

This, the second release of the highly anticipated Retrospect Ensemble series, features the Easter Oratorio, one of Bach's best-known oratorios and a monumental work, as well as the Ascension Oratorio. Retrospect Ensemble employs large-scale forces for this recording including four-part choir and orchestra (including timpani). This dynamic recording highlights the skill and brilliance of Bach's writing through the inspired story telling of its star soloists and the passion of the Ensemble.

Remaining faithful to their tradition of making live recordings during the course of their concert tours, Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century now come forward with the results of concerts given by them in the spring of last year with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Easter Oratorio as the centrepiece of the new release. With Ilse Eerens, Michael Chance, Markus Schäfer and David Wilson-Johnson as the vocal soloists, and with the faithful Cappella Amsterdam responsible for the choruses, Brüggen and his legendary ensemble once again demonstrate why they have been – and continue to be – one of the pillars of the historically-informed performance movement, which from the final quarter of the 20th century onwards, has stirred up so radically the way of hearing music composed before 1800.

Bach's celebration of Easter is a mostly joyous one, opening with a three-movement sinfonia, richly orchestrated, and complete with trumpets and drums: the third movement includes the chorus inviting listeners to rejoice and hasten to the tomb of Jesus, "For our Savior has awakened." There follow recitatives and arias for Mary Magdalen, Mary, the mother of James, Peter, and John. Each character goes through grief to love and gratefulness, and Bach's endlessly inventive scoring, melodic lines, and changing orchestral textures take us on a rich, 40-minute musical journey to peace. Only a too-long soprano aria tends to wear.

There's a long-standing debate over the issue of OVPP (one voice per part) in performing Bach's choral works. On this disc, it works better in some choruses than others–for example, it lacks the majesty that a choir can bring to the start of the Magnificat's Gloria. As to the individual voices, in the oratorio's two big arias, soprano Kimberly McCord sings with beguiling poise, though some may find her vibrato a touch fidgety; while Paul Agnew's moving singing of the heavenly tenor aria reflecting on Christ's grave-clothes has bags of intensity, though line and focus occasionally suffer. Neal Davies's forthright bass makes the best impression.

It is well known that Bach was a keen recycler – always borrowing old musical ideas and refashioning them for different expressive purposes. The Oster Oratorium is no exception in that its origins can be traced back to a secular cantata written in 1725 to celebrate the birthday of Duke Christian of Saxony-Weissenfels. Little over a month later the cantata was performed again, this time with an amended text and new recitatives to suit the celebration of Easter Sunday, but it was not until 1735 that the composer, having made further alterations to the work’s structure and scoring, chose to give it the revised title ‘oratorio’.

Andrew Parrott was the first conductor to adopt Joshua Rifkin's controversial one-singer-per-part approach to Bach's "choral" music (other than Rifkin himself, that is). On the whole, Parrott and his ensemble make a good case for both one-per-part practice and their own performances. Once the ear adjusts, the balance is excellent: the vocal parts don't dominate the orchestra (as many listeners accustomed to a chorus expect); they are equal partners with it–which suits Bach's intricate and often dense writing for instruments and voices.

The ongoing cantata cycle of Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan was initiated in 1995. The series has now reached its 40th volume, in the meantime receiving an astonishing number of distinctions from magazines and critics all over the world. But parallell to their cantata cycle, Suzuki and his Collegium have also recorded Bach’s larger-scaled choral works; recordings which have caught the imagination and attention of audiences and critics alike.

The Magnificat was the very first work Bach composed after his appointment as Cantor of St. Thomas's School in Leipzig in 1723. We can imagine the care he lavished on the work that was to establish him in this new function. It was revised some years later: the key was changed to D major and the forces were considerably enlarged. This is the version in which one of Bach's most famous choral works has come down to us.