Dominica

One of the seemingly endless possibilities for programming Bach's cantatas, this 2008 Antoine Marchand disc drawn from Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir's survey of the complete surviving cantatas joins five works featuring either alto or tenor soloists. The first two works here feature Polish alto Bogna Bartosz, the third German alto Andreas Scholl, the fourth German tenor Christoph Prégardien, and the fifth – a single aria for an unspecified occasion – Bartosz again. As in all Koopman's Bach recordings, these are always entirely successful if not entirely predictable performances. Organist Koopman is a canny Bach conductor, leading performances from the keyboard that combines both the spirituality and humanity of Bach's music.

You might not expect the figure of Mary to have called forth exceptional music from the Protestant Bach, but the Marian feast days survived the Lutheran paring of the Catholic calendar, and at least the first two of these three cantatas are imposing works. Best of all is the opening chorale of the Cantata No. 1, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern," BWV 1 (How brightly shines the morning star). This work, despite its numbering, was actually the last in the series of cyclical chorale cantatas Bach wrote in 1724 and 1725. The eight-minute opening chorale, a gloriously broad design for chorus, horns, strings, and a pair of oboes da caccia, bears affinities with the warm, generous chorales of the contemporaneous St. John Passion.