Bouree

Stand Up was the first album where Anderson controlled the music and lyrics, resulting in a group of diverse songs that ranged from the swirling blues of “A New Day Yesterday” and the mandolin-fueled rave-up of “Fat Man,” to the group’s spirited re-working of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Bouree in E Minor.” In a recent interview, Anderson picked Stand Up as his favorite Jethro Tull album, “because that was my first album of first really original music. It has a special place in my heart.” The first disc features Steven Wilson’s new stereo mixes of the original album, along with a number of rare recordings, including an unreleased version of “Bouree.” Other highlights include four songs recorded at the BBC, plus stereo single mixes for “Living In The Past” and “Driving Song”…

Jordi Savall - Johann Sebastian Bach - Les Quatre Ouvertures (2012) {2CD Set Alia Vox AVSA 9890 rec 1990}
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© 1990, 2012 Alia Vox | AVSA 9890
Classical / Baroque / Orchestral

There’s very little to say about this recording save throwing yet more encomiums Jordi Savall’s way: as with his other Bach recordings, this is a success. The warmly dark, coppery sound for which these forces are renowned is here in its full glory; Savall’s pacing is neither frenzied nor laborious; the audio clarity is stunning. Because Savall is such a renowned gamba player who has recruited great fellow string players to his projects (note one Fabio Biondi on violin), you might overlook stellar playing elsewhere in the ensemble. But there’s no way to ignore the wind section in the opening movement in the first suite: the exquisite phrasing and pitch-perfect tones demand to be heard (and heard repeatedly, at that), and the masterful playing becomes even more delightfully apparent in the extended oboe and bassoon solo in the same suite’s Bourée.

There are few composers who have vanished from music history to the extent of Johann Abraham Schmierer. We know very little about this composer’s origins, education, career and life journey. Some listeners, during or after hearing this recording, may well wonder why this music – despite its undeniable qualities and relatively early publication (already in 1902 in the tenth volume of Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst) – has not been recorded earlier. One reason is surely the fragmentary character of the collection, for six suites are obviously missing.

There's nothing "English" about the English Suites, except for a story circulating after Bach's death that they were composed for an Englishman. These pieces are larger than Bach's French Suites, for in addition to the usual batch of dances that characterizes the suite form, they also contain a large introductory prelude, or "overture." Gould performs this music–as he does all of Bach–with the crisp style and utter digital clarity that for many people remains the way this music was meant to sound.

– David Hurwitz