"The Scholl/Herreweghe CD is distinguished by its marriage of beautiful sound and expressive intensity. The richly nuanced orchestral playing remains forceful throughout and Scholl imbues his beguiling voice with a fervent conviction…"
Throughout most of his professional life, Johann Sebastian Bach composed cantatas for use at church services: it is thought that he probably wrote at least 300 such works. Some 200 of these are still extant, of which the earliest hail from Bach's time as organist in Arnstadt (1703-07) and the last were composed only a year or two before his death in 1750. In 1995, when Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan began the monumental journey of recording the cantatas, they decided to follow in Bach's footsteps.
Amongst several delightful examples of mid- and late-baroque German solo cantatas included here, one stands out as a little masterpiece. It's a lamentation by Johann Christoph Bach, the leading composer of the Bach dynasty before Johann Sebastian. I cannot imagine any listener to be capable of hearing this music without in some way being affected by its poignancy.
Musica Baltica Volume 4 Johann Jeremias Du Grain was on familiar terms with the musical greats of his era. He learned the musical trade from Telemann, who was already famous at the time, and he assisted the very busy Handel with the composition of a festive cantata for the five hundredth anniversary of Elbing, his chosen place of residence. One hears traces of these illustrious surroundings in Du Grain's own cantatas, which Andrzej Szadejko and the Goldberg Baroque Ensemble are now presenting for the first time on this audiophile multichannel release in the Musica Baltica series. Du Grain's cantatas not only represent the very best of their times; they are also extraordinarily appealing.
This recording, whose title is here embodied in an instrumental version by Georg Böhm of the renowned chorale Vater unser, brings together sacred works and Lutheran cantatas for the alto voice. The concertante role allotted to the instruments is particularly important in these works and contributes to their deeply expressive character; these works were heavily influenced by Italian styles of the period. All of the instrumental works are closely linked to sacred music, the majority of them being constructed around chorale melodies.
According to German theological tradition, which Bach knew very well, the alto voice was the very symbol of the Holy Ghost. Bach's three solo cantatas for alto demand enormous vocal virtuosity. Their extraordinary musical variety embraces sublime consolatory lullabies, a faithful echo of an organ concerto and the dramatic qualities of an oratorio. Andreas Scholl is the featured soloist in this reissue, backed by Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent.
The present set is the debut of Ton Koopman on the Challenge Classics label and the re-start of the series of complete cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Volume 13 in this CD presentation contains the third series of chorale cantatas from the second annual cycle Bach composed for Leipzig. Music criticism in the modern sense did not exist in the eighteenth century, so we do not really know anything about how the public responded to Bach's music. One of the few comments we have is in a newspaper report of Bach's first appearance in the capacity of Cantor of St Thomas's, presenting a cantata on 30 May 1723,but we learn only that it was received with approbation, even applause.