Paul Gilding

In this new recording on Archiv, Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli players have offered the polar extreme, adding much to the credibility of recent theories about the small forces Bach employed in his own performances of the work. There is no gilding the lily; just what the score prescribes: 9 singers, one on a part, and a couple dozen players. The sum is a performance that is both lighter than air and deeply moving. Brisk tempi and crystalline textures do everything to highlight what is, after all, the heart of the work: the biblical text and the artful interpolations by Christian Picander. A buoyant organ continue underpins solo playing that is articulate, imitative of the diction of the singers who, for their part, combine natural vocalism with a reverential but never pedantic faithfulness to Bach's score (this is not Handel; Bach tended to write precisely the ornamentation he wanted rather than leave it to notoriously capricious singers).