Musen

Gustav Leonhardt began recording Bach's secular cantatas on Philips in 1990 after completing the sacred cantatas cycle with Harnoncourt. Those Philips discs were well received but are now hard to find, either on CD or as downloads, so I was thrilled to discover that Leonhardt, now 80, just recorded another pair of Bach's secular cantatas.

When he published his two Apothéoses in memory of two great masters of music in 1724-25, François Couperin was asserting his desire to promote a meeting of the French and Italian styles – from a very Gallic point of view, naturally. The idea was to convince the French Muses that henceforth one could say sonade and cantade in their language – a strategy already pursued in the much earlier La Sultane and La Superbe. But, far from blindly imitating his idols, Couperin takes inspiration from their styles and adapts them to his own brio. The result is a delight for all to share with the musicians of Gli Incogniti and Amandine Beyer, whose first harmonia mundi recording this is.

There are 45 chorale preludes in Bach's Little Organ Book. Composed for use during Protestant worship services, they are mostly short (less than two minutes). Most present a four part texture in which one of the lines is the chorale melody around which the composer weaves the other lines.
When the entire set is performed, organists usually vary and contrast the tone colors to add point and individuality to each item. Rene Saorgin chooses this approach in this digital recording from 1983…

By John Austin (Kangaroo Ground, Australia)