J. S. Bach 2003

René Jacobs began his career as a countertenor and quickly earned the reputation as one of the finest of his time. But he gradually turned to conducting and since the turn of the new century has rarely sung in concert. As a countertenor Jacobs championed a string of forgotten Baroque composers on his recordings: Antonio Cesti, Sigismondo d'India, Luca Marenzio, Pierre Guédron, Michel Lambert, and others.

From the irresitably forceful opening bars of the English Suite's prelude to the throbbing repeated octaves of the D minor concerto, Richter shows why many of Bach's works are ideally suited to the piano. The Bach concerto is often regarded as a student piece, or relegated to refined performances on the harpsichord. Not here – the bookend movements are as maniacal, pulsing and driving as the best of John Coltrane or Prokofiev. The CD is worth it just for those movements, but Richter's treatment of the English Suite is equally enlightening, especially the Prelude and Gavotte.

The English Concert is an "authentic performance" ensemble, founded by harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock in 1973. The group quickly established itself as one of Britain's leading orchestras in the then-young field of performing Baroque works on Baroque instruments. The English Concert and the energetic Pinnock helped put historical performance on the charts. The orchestra has a reputation for stylish, lively, and high-quality music-making. Its sound is light, bright, and clear. Its strings usually employ no vibrato, and its winds have a woody, attractive tone that blends well with strings and with the fortepiano.

Jean Lauxerois begins his notes to Marc Coppey’s recording of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites by enumerating the many reasons why yet another version of these familiar works “to swell the ever-growing ranks” is superfluous, then explains Coppey’s decision to ignore the arguments as “obedience to a deeper logic, a feeling of necessity”. Lauxerois offers many examples of this “deeper logic”–such as that the Suites somehow correspond to the six days of creation (and on the seventh day God rested…), or that the Suites somehow possess an internal universal code summarizing Leibnitz’s best-of-all-possible-worlds theorem. While it’s impossible to know exactly how obedient Coppey has been to this “deeper logic”, thankfully he delivers an expertly performed set that on purely musical terms renders such rhetorical tripe irrelevant.

Old Russian recordings of Bach can impress with their sheer sensuality even if you feel they're not terribly idiomatic, and something similar happens here with this Russian release. Russia's Caro Mitis label has plunged into the audiophile market in a big way and has generally delivered clear, spatially balanced recordings that are satisfying to experience, right down to the label's juicy-fruit logo. In oboist Alexei Utkin they have found an ideal collaborator. His music-making is, in a word, gorgeous.