Bach Bwv 54

'James Bowman is on impressive form and his admirers need not hesitate here' (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs) D'excellentes interprétations' (Ecouter, Voir, France) 'After hearing the first three notes of Cantata 170 my expectations of this recording were high. I was not disappointed' (Hi Fi News)

Here is a package that satisfies intellectual curiosity and is musically delightful. This two-disc set begins with a precise, but still musical, harpsichord performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations by Céline Frisch. Her Aria is clean, with both the melody and the bass line countermelody clear and phrased so that everything comes together well. Her ornaments fit naturally into the melodies throughout the variations, without drawing attention away from the tune, and she always has a sense of direction and forward momentum. The second disc contains the 14 canons on the first eight notes of the bass of the Aria from the Goldberg Variations and the two songs that are contained in the quodlibet near the end of the Variations. The canons are rich and warm performed by Café Zimmermann, a string sextet that includes a double bass, with excellent contrasts in the feel of each canon. The song Cabbages and Turnips Have Driven Me Away is the highlight of the two discs. Period instruments accompany Dominique Visse as he sings about a hunter bringing a girl home to meet his mother. Visse switches from a jolly, idiomatic tenor voice for the hunter to a smooth alto for the girl, and a slightly grating alto for the mother, often in mid-verse.

Jumping from Mozart on Deutsche Grammophon to Bach on Decca, oboist Albrecht Mayer continues to explore transcriptions as well as works originally for his instrument on Voices of Bach. This is a good and necessary thing since neither Mozart nor Bach wrote a sufficient number of works for the oboe to fill out a single disc. In the case of Bach, Mayer has hit on the ingenious solution of including not just Bach's canonical Oboe Concerto, plus his concertos for oboe d'amore and English horn, but also eight arrangements of well-known chorales for chorus and oboe.

The existence of a third Passion by Bach based on the Gospel of St. Mark had long been known. Numerous studies carried out from the second half of the 20th century by specialist musicologists and musicians confirmed that on Good Friday, 1731, Bach presented this Passion set to a text by Picander, which the latter published one year later at the same time as his third volume of poetry. In 2009, the existence of this Passion was fully confirmed by the discovery at St. Petersburg of a later version of the libretto used for a new performance of the work, which took place in 1744. Compared with the 1732 libretto, it contains a number of modifications to the texts, as well as a different ordering of some chorales and arias and the addition of two new arias. Thanks to the new version, we have a very clear idea of the form and content of this third Passion by Bach.

Started in 2001 Sigiswald Kuijken cycle on Accent has made a very promising start. As one might expect these performances have a subtle sense of rhythmic hierarchy, with animated dance metres and well shaped continuo lines. The performances are highly convincing: the vocal soloists bring great energy to their lines, adding effective ornamentation in the choruses and projecting a distinctive character for each aria. These performances illuminate Bach’s cantatas with persuasive musicianship and also a critical appraisal of current performing styles. As a result, they are some of the finest examples of what historically informed performers can achieve.

The third volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas comprises works drawn from three different categories. First comes a group of seven sacred cantatas from the years 1714-17, the majority of which were written for the Weimar Schloßkirche. Taken together with the cantatas contained in Volumes 1 and 2,these seven works - Cantatas 54,63,155, 161,162,163 and 165 - form the group of 23 sacred cantatas that have survived complete from the years leading up to the end of Bach's term of office as Konzertmeister to the Weimar court in 1717.

A truly beautiful and unique tracklist with rarities including Víkingur Ólafsson’s new arrangement for piano of a Bach Cantata, rare transcriptions for guitar, for mandolin and even String Quartet; alongside familiar Bach masterpieces, all played by the world’s greatest classical artists, curated and presented Deutsche Grammophon.

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.