Bach’s three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord were once thought to belong to the composer’s Cöthen period. His employer, prince Leopold, was an enthusiastic amateur gambist and the court orchestra boasted a performer of exceptional talent in Christian Ferdinand Abel. Yet it seems more likely that the pieces were written at Leipzig, possibly for Abel’s son Carl Friedrich who lived there for several years and who may even have been a Bach pupil. In all three Sonatas the gamba is partnered by an obbligato harpsichord, Bach placing the gamba line between the treble and bass keyboard strands to provide a distinct voice in the alto-tenor range. Bach always wrote expressively for this eloquent member of the viol family, above all in the wonderful G minor Sonata whose outer movements adhere to the ritornello principles of a Vivaldian concerto. Jonathan Manson and Trevor Pinnock form a hugely rewarding partnership. Both are spirited players with strong characters but who, yet, are susceptible to the sublime poetry of the Sonata’s centrally placed Adagio. There is much rewarding dialogue in these performances where neither player steals the limelight from the other. The conversational interplay between the instruments is animated and engaging and the rapport between the artists hardly can be placed in doubt. In short, I find greater athleticism and a greater sense of playful spontaneity here than in rival versions either by Jordi Savall and Ton Koopman for instance (Alia Vox) or Jaap Ter Linden and Richard Egarr (Harmonia Mundi). The fourth Sonata in their programme is a transcription of a piece best known in its B minor version for flute and harpsichord but which, in turn, derives from a partly preserved source in G minor. Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Nicholas Anderson, BBC Music Magazine

Listening to these works is synonymous with pure joy: Graupner's expressive chromaticism, the uncommonly manifold instrumental color artistry in the arias, and the most highly proficient application of the Baroque doctrine of the affections are enchanting and gripping. All of this is more immediately understandable and emotionally more heartfelt than the works of Bach. This is what klassik-heute. Com wrote following the release of our Vol. 2 with the Passion cantatas of Christoph Graupner. And now - for the Passion season - we are releasing Vol. 3. Once again the instrumentation has been designed with great variety, and it is here that the key to Graupner's personal style is to be found: he captivates listeners not so much with impressive, highly memorable »melodies« but with intensive playing with the various tone colors made available to him by the court chapel members and their instruments on each particular occasion. For all their individuality and rich variety, however, the cantatas are linked together: the three works for Quinquagesima, Passion Sunday, and Holy Thursday presented here adhere to the formal structure with seven numbers as a rule most frequently employed by Graupner. Their design is largely symmetrical, with framing choral numbers and one soprano aria and one bass aria. These cantatas have in common a contrast principle assigned central importance and employed on a textual and dramatic level as well as in the musical design. It is precisely here that Graupner's original background as an opera composer is reflected, a circumstance that had enabled him to gather experience with pronounced dramaturgical oppositions.

Those who enjoyed the London Baroque's 1985 Harmonia Mundi recording of Bach's trio sonatas needn't worry about duplication on this new BIS offering. This time violinist Richard Gwilt has transcribed six of Bach's sonatas BWV 525-530 that survive in manuscript form for organ (which scholarship has since revealed were transcriptions themselves). Also unlike the London Baroque's previous recording, Gwilt has scored no wind parts in favor of a more straightforward "classic combination" of two violins and continuo. What has not changed is the evident passion and plain joy the group still continues to bring to Bach.

A comparison of Gwilt's transcription of Sonata BWV 525 with the equally lovely though very different recent BMC offering by the Gyöngyössy-Hadady-Lakatos-Dobozy ensemble (see review Q5061) not only testifies to the versatility and durability of Bach's music, it also explains why because of those possibilities so many musicians return to it. First, the London Baroque account is performed on period violins while the G-H-L-D ensemble utilizes a modern flute and oboe. The tempos also vary, with the London Baroque favoring slightly swifter tempos throughout, particularly in the opening and closing movements. Both of these widely differing interpretations are equally captivating and offer much to enjoy; choice will depend strictly on whether you prefer the more crisp-sounding, sprightlier performance on BIS or the gentler, more pensive wind account on BMC. My advice is to not miss out on either; and while you're at it, add the sumptuously diabolical Rare Fruits Council recording on Astrée/Naïve for a trilogy of Bach trio sonata heaven!

BIS's sound is up to its usual audiophile standards. Gwilt's engaging notes are on par with his equally stylish fiddle playing and the shining performances of veteran colleagues violinist Ingrid Seifert, cellist Charles Medlam, and relative newcomer, harpsichordist Terence Charlston. A winner!
--John Greene, ClassicsToday.com

BWV 10, composed for the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a setting of the German translation of the Magnificat. The cantata is more compact than Bach’s Latin Magnificat––seven numbers (instead of 12) and about two thirds as long––and not as grand (one trumpet, for example, instead of three). The choir, as in most cantatas of the period, appears only in the opening chorus and the final chorale. In a duet for alto and tenor, the chorale melody is not sung, but intoned by the solo trumpet. Cantatas 93, 107, and 178 were composed for the fifth, seventh, and eighth Sundays after Trinity respectively. No. 93 is a prime example of the chorale cantata; all of its seven movements quote the chorale melody wholly or partially. Cantatas 107 and 178 show how flexible Bach was in applying the principle. BWV 107’s chorale tune appears in the opening choral fantasia and again in the expanded chorale finale, but not in the intervening movements, a recitative, and four consecutive arias. However, Bach uncharacteristically uses the unedited text of the chorale in all movements. In BWV 178, the chorale tune appears in four of the seven movements, but the text is paraphrased in the middle five. When listening to Bach’s cantatas one must always expect to be surprised.

Some general notes: after Maestro Suzuki himself, the closest thing to a constant in the series remains Peter Kooij’s steady bass. The leading soprano is now Yukari Nonoshita, whose clear, near white tone is entirely appropriate for Bach’s music. Tenors come and go; note that four different tenors, all satisfactory, appear on these four discs. Suzuki continues to alternate between male or female altos depending on the specific task at hand. The soloists participate in the chorus but do not sing alone. Western names have become quite rare in the list of performers, with Japanese musicians handling most parts, vocal and instrumental, with their by-now-accustomed excellence. The notes remain exemplary, but Klaus Hofmann now shares that task with Suzuki, whose function is generally to explain his decisions regarding problems with the performing editions. As always, BIS’s recordings are first-rate... Of course, I’m going to urge interested listeners to acquire [this disc]. Bach and Suzuki are still one of the best tandems going.

-- George Chien, FANFARE

BACH Trauer-Music, BWV 244a • Andrew Parrott, cond; Emily van Evera (sop); Clare Wilkinson (ms); Charles Daniels (ten); Tom Meglioranza (bar); Taverner Consort & Players • AVIE AV2241 (78:40 Text and Translation)


Anyone wishing to perform the funeral music for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, Bach’s onetime boss, comes up against a serious technical problem:There is no music for it, though the text survives. Doing something about such situations is the very stuff of much modern musicology. Consider the new movements for the music of Mahler, Elgar, Britten, even whole new music (in the style of or, perhaps, not: Manfred Tojahn’s for La clemenza di Tito or Luciano Berio’s for Turandot ). The arguments for this sort of thing are well worn but are still making the rounds: The composer did this sort of thing himself, the composer would have wanted this piece finished, it gives us a new view of this or that period, approach, style of the composer, and so on without any end in sight. Bach is an especial victim of this sort of carpentry, and BWV 244a is a tempting target, along with the St. Mark and St. Luke Passions.


When he compiled the Bach Werke-Verzeichnis in 1950, Wolfgang Schmieder noted that a good deal of Picander’s 1728 text fit certain numbers of the 1725 St. Matthew Passion (which is why it shares the same BWV number) and the 1727 Trauer-Ode (BWV 198). In what I assume will be the notes for this recording, Andrew Parrott makes clear what fits where, leaving only the problem of the recitatives, which he composed himself and about which he himself says “caveat emptor,” and the final organization of the whole, which he posits took place in four sections instead of what seems to be only two or three, and began the night before with the funeral itself, followed the next day with the memorial service. This necessitates a rearrangement of the libretto as printed, which he argues may not have represented exactly what happened.


To the question of why we need this reconstruction Parrott gives no direct answer, but, as the longest of the known remaining texts for which there is no music, it clearly constitutes a challenge. He also thinks it refreshing to encounter some of this music in a different context. It must be said, then, that Parrott meets this challenge with his customary energy and expertise.


This performance is made with the kind of disposition Parrott has used for decades, and argued forcefully for in The Essential Bach Choir (2001), mostly one-to-a-part, with the choruses doubled here. While this approach seems reasonable for the church cantatas, I think it entirely unlikely for the passions, the Trauer-Ode , and this piece, music that required the greatest possible effect, not least in the choruses. Interestingly, as with the Trauer-Ode and the secular cantatas, but not with the Passions, there are no chorales.


Let it be noted, then, that, within his musicological choices, Parrott has made a convincing job of this piece. The Taverner Consort plays with long-won expertise, and the soloists are uniformly good. The eight-member chorus just does not have enough gravity, and the sopranos tend to be a bit shrill in places. When it joins the tenor in two numbers, they are recorded distantly, though on their own quite close up, as is most of the recording. As near as I can tell, there is no other recording of an attempted reconstruction of this music. No matter; if one is needed, this one will do nicely.


FANFARE: Alan Swanson

Handel' oratorio Israel in Egypt was written three years before the Messiah and, like the Messiah, is somewhat atypical of the composer' oratorios. Scored for double chorus and an orchestra using trombones, trumpets, timpani, woodwinds and strings.

This volume heralds the beginning of the most substantial and ambitious compositional exercise in Bach’s career: an annual series of cantatas in which the composer planned that every Sunday in the church calendar would be identified, textually and musically, by the appropriate chorale for the season. Bach’s second annual cycle – or Jahrgang 2 – was never completed but it contains around 40 chorale cantatas in which, most notably, the first stanza of the chorale is presented variously as an intricate fantasia on the chosen hymn, proclaimed with stirring fervour, usually by the sopranos. While Bach sought new compositional challenges here, he also knew that his boys at St Thomas’s would cope better with familiar chorale-based material than the highly complex choruses which characterise the earlier cycle.

Suzuki’s approach to these cantatas is not strictly chronological as has often been the case. He starts with the first piece in the cycle, the splendid O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (No 20), which Bach performed on the first Sunday of Trinity (June 11, 1724) but jumps a week by missing out No 2 (with its strikingly austere stilo antico opening movement) and goes for No 7, and then chooses No 94 from a few weeks later. None of this has much bearing on the performances except that this formula seems to juxtapose deftly the wide range of forms used by Bach. The extended and graphic description of Christ’s baptism in Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam (No 7), articulated by two concertante violin parts, is contrasted with the dazzling French overture of No 20. If the playing in the former is somewhat prosaic, Suzuki gives the majestic opening movement of O Ewigkeit such apt propulsion in the bass line that one only intermittently yearns for the more secularised elegance of Herreweghe.

It seems curious that two performances of No 20, released so closely, should employ the same tenor and bass soloists in Jan Kobow and Peter Kooy. Suzuki’s approach with both singers is rather more rhetorical than Herreweghe, who tends to irradiate the music for its own sake, enhanced by the cultivated strings of Collegium Vocale. Both have something interesting to say but Suzuki connects language and music with greater depth of sentiment.

As exemplary a work is Was frag ich nach der Welt (No 94), a substantial cantata whose librettist clearly worked in close collaboration with Bach, ensuring that each stanza of the chorale could be presented with disarming invention. The work is as eager to provide telling dramatic imagery as it is to ruminate on the transience of life and Mammon’s vanity. Bach makes instant demands on his virtuoso flute player who, judging by the number of obbligato parts from this period, was no slouch. It is a marvellous, fresh and abiding testament to Bach’s increasing obsession with unified and economical means. Suzuki realises its quizzical turns and relishes the enriching set-pieces.

Pieter Jan Leusink and Ton Koopman’s readings are full of character and ruddy energy (in the case of Koopman and the Amsterdammers, particularly distinguished instrumental performances) but neither can boast Robin Blaze’s commentary on our deluded world, Betorte Welt. All told, another success chalked up for this continually impressive Bach series.

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone [5/2004]