Netherlands Bach Society

Johann Sebastian Bach - St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
The Netherlands Bach Society - Jos van Veldhoven
3x SACD ISO: 9,07 GB | 3x FLAC @ 24bit/88.2kHz: 2,85 GB | Full Artwork | 5% Rec. Info
Label/Cat#: Channel Classics # CCS SA 32511 | Country/Year: Netherlands 2011
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque | Hoster: Filepost & Uploaded

…Whatever other recordings you may have in your library, Veldhoven’s inspired reading, with its exceptional blend of committed musicianship and scholarship should definitely be auditioned by all who love this work. This is without doubt a top recommendation and anyone receiving this set, as an Easter gift, will surely be delighted.

Johann Sebastian Bach - St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244
The Netherlands Bach Society - Jos van Veldhoven
EAC+LOG+CUE | 3x FLAC: 670 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Channel Classics # CCS SA 32511 | Country/Year: Netherlands 2011
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…Whatever other recordings you may have in your library, Veldhoven’s inspired reading, with its exceptional blend of committed musicianship and scholarship should definitely be auditioned by all who love this work. This is without doubt a top recommendation and anyone receiving this set, as an Easter gift, will surely be delighted.

Founded in 1921, The Netherlands Bach Society is the oldest Early Music ensemble in the Netherlands, and possibly in the whole world. Yet along with the musicians, its artistic director Jos van Veldhoven is still continually in search of contemporary ways of presenting this music, whether it be the traditional performances of the St. Matthew Passion in Naarden, other works by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) or music by his predecessors, successors, contemporaries and fellow spirits.

This issue of the St. John Passion is also a special event in the world of music, because a choice has been made for Bachs very earliest version of this work (1724) in a reconstruction by musicologist Dr. Pieter Dirksen. The Netherlands Bach Society performs the work in a small-scale scoring with ten singers and eleven instrumentalists, no distinction being made between choristers and soloists. According to the most recent research, this scoring constitutes a very close approximation of the ensemble with which Bach gave the first performance of the St. John Passion. Bachs St. John Passion is less well known to some than his St. Matthew Passion: unjustly so, in many peoples opinion. Judge for yourself, as you treat both your ears and eyes to this performance of the Netherlands Bach Society…

The Treaty of Utrecht concluded the War of Spanish Succession in 1713. Its terms were agreed principally between the British and the opposing French, but this caused disaffection among Britain’s German allies, including the Elector of Hanover (soon to be George I). The Elector was also disgruntled that his Kapellmeister Handel, absent and pursuing lucrative freelance jobs in London, composed a large-scale Te Deum and Jubilate for the Service of Thanksgiving held in Wren’s recently ­completed St Paul’s Cathedral.

Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, a collection of love songs grew up. Under the title of the “Most beautiful of songs”, they found a home in the Old Testament-it was Martin Luther who first gave them the name of “Song of songs”-and since that time they have inspired and fascinated a vast number of theologians, mystics, philosophers, poets, painters, and, last but not least, composers. Particularly during the Baroque period, these poetic, sensual, vividly descriptive texts were set over and over again to music, and they inspired librettists to expand on the original texts.

Bach's St Matthew Passion is almost always described as a double-choir composition for two choirs and two orchestras. Two large ensembles play in dialogue, and the score presents a symmetrical structure. The scoring of the two groups of singers and players is identical, and each ensemble has four soloists for the arias. On the stage one often sees two equal groups of singers, and an orchestra likewise divided exactly into two. The Evangelist and Jesus are often the only exceptions to this impressive symmetry.