For this programme, Duo Diversitas has selected or created sophisticated arrangements that embody virtuosity and musical expression. In focusing on great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Marisa Minder and Evgeniya Spalinger explore the artistic refinement, lyrical grace and technical sophistication of the guitar and flute. The one original work for this combination is Hans Haug's Capriccio, a modern classic that alludes to Baroque procedure but within the context of exciting contemporary harmonies.

Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach was not regarded as a genius in his day, so how did this headstrong and belligerent but ambitious young musician become so extraordinarily productive? What were his influences? How did he end up in jail and what did he get up to in Café Zimmerman? Discover all of this and more in musicologist Davinia Caddy's fascinating biography of a composer who, to Max Reger, represented ‘the beginning and the end of all music’. The narrative, presented by actor Leighton Pugh, is illustrated with musical excerpts including the Brandenburg Concertos, Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, The Art of Fugue, St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor among many others.

With performances by...

Nils Thilo Krämer | Christian Benda | Petra Morath-Pusinelli | Alexander Jablokov | Robert Hill | Kölner Kammerorchester | Takako Nishizaki | Ariane Pfister | Capella Istropolitana | Andrés Gabetta | Helmut Müller-Brühl | Wolfgang Rübsam | Sebastian Benda | Ralf Otto | Swiss Baroque Soloists | Slovak Philharmonic Chorus | Christian Brembeck | Julia Brown | Luc Beauséjour | Gerhild Romberger | Bachorchester Mainz | Jan Cižmár | Oliver von Dohnányi

The variation cycle is without a doubt one of the most important works of keyboard instrument literature, played time and again, both in the original version and in miscellaneous adaptations and instrumentations. Framed by the unforgettably beautiful aria in a form similar to a sarabande, the 30 variations are bound by the bass framework and divided in two larger parts. A French overture marks the beginning of the second part. Every third variation, composed as an interval canon and in which the parts begin in an ever-increasing interval, additionally subdivides the work into ten groups of three. This wonderful work with its plethora of possible structures and symbols concealed in numbers has kept generations of musicians and musicologists busy and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come. The best thing to do is to lean back, leave the task of hitting the right key at the right time to the musicians and let the music speak for itself! Or, as Albert Einstein once said, "What I have to say about Bach's life work: Listen, perform, love and adore it! And shut up!"

“For this recording, I use a modern setup: specifically a 1930 Carl Becker cello made in Chicago, and a modern bow. I admit that such a setup is quite far off from the sound world that Bach must have imagined when composing these suites. I have done my best, however, to balance this modern setup with a thorough understanding of Baroque stylistic principles, particularly in regard to sound production, bow strokes, vibrato, slurring, voicing, and ornaments. 

Australian cellist Richard Narroway has proven himself to be equally at home with repertoire both new and old. He has appeared as a soloist with the Grand Rapids Symphony and the HanZhou Philharmonic Orchestra, and in recital on Chicago’s WFMT Dame Myra Hess Series and the Keys to the City Piano Festival at Chicago’s Symphony Center. In addition he has given performances in Australia, China, Germany, Canada and the United States, in prestigious venues such as the Kennedy Center, Chicago Symphony Center, Preston Bradley Hall and the Sydney Opera House.

‘Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her’ is a new CD featuring organ music with which to celebrate the Christmas season. + Works by Bach, Brahms and Barber stand alongside lesser-known works by composers including Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911), Otto Malling (1848-1915) and Flor Peeters (1903-86), making for an interesting and diverse holiday listening experience. + Michael Hartmann (b. 1955), organist, lecturer and artistic director, is the featured performer on the Oehms Classics release.

Today, there is no doubt that Johann Sebastian Bach took Baroque music to its sublime zenith. Just how much Bach was ahead of his time can be gauged by the fact his ‘piano’ music engaged the greatest among his successors: Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy and Shostakovich. Four pianists perform Bach on this album. They stand for different periods in interpretational history, beginning with the ‘New Objectivity’ of Carl Seeman, born in 1910, up to the highly virtuoso art of Konstantin Lifschitz, born in 1976 and also taught by Alfred Brendel. The four personalities of the pianists on this album merge with Bach’s music, giving a notion of why it is accorded universal magnitude.

"When the Wigmore Hall Live label released an archival recording of a 1998 recital by the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson last year, it raised the hope of more such posthumous finds. And just as that hope had begun to fade, here comes another treasure, this one unearthed from the archives of Emmanuel Music in Boston.

As it happens, this release serves as tribute not only to Hunt Lieberson, who died in 2006, but also to her frequent close collaborator Craig Smith, the founder of Emmanuel Music, who died in November. And the material is choice: spacious arias from two Bach cantatas and extended excerpts from Handel’s oratorio “Hercules.”

The disc begins with a 1992 recording of the aria “Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder” from Bach’s Cantata No. 30: Something of a tease as the opening instrumental passage heightens the anticipation of Hunt Lieberson’s entrance, more than two minutes into the disc. But that glorious Voice, when it appears, meets every expectation.

The “Hercules” excerpts, from 1999, trace the travails of the hero’s wife, Dejanira, culminating in a harrowing mad scene.... Although Hunt Lieberson’s compelling stage presence added mightily to any performance, the voice alone amply conveys her characteristic intensity here....

Dare we hope for more?"

– James R. Oestreich, New York Times [8/10/2008]

The early death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson deprived the world of an exceptional artist and one, moreover, who left all too few commercial recordings. However, some archive recordings are now beginning to emerge and this new release, featuring previously unissued live recordings is one such. The CD also forms a tribute to one of her mentors, Craig Smith, Music Director at Emmanuel Church, Boston from 1970 until his death in November 2007 at the age of sixty.

Smith founded Emmanuel Music, which, besides fulfilling a liturgical function at the church, evolved also into a concert ensemble of no little distinction. Perhaps Smith’s greatest achievement was to inaugurate the practice whereby each Sunday between October and April, the main Sunday morning church service includes a cantata by Bach appropriate to the day. That tradition continues to this day and later this year the thirty-ninth consecutive season of liturgical cantatas will commence.

It was through Emmanuel Music that the then Lorraine Hunt took some of the first steps on her solo singing career and she maintained the connection, I believe, for the rest of her life, including appearances in the Sunday cantata series. This disc, therefore, takes us back to her singing roots.

The disc begins and ends with arias taken, I presume, from complete Sunday service performances of Bach cantatas. The aria "Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder" comes from the cantata Freue dich, erlöste schar, written for the feast of St. John the Baptist. Alfred Dürr writes thus of the cantata: "The underlying mood is joyful, relaxed and unproblematical, not only in the opening chorus but in the four arias, where a dance-like style is often clearly evident." Unfortunately, to judge by this aria at least, Craig Smith seems to have a different conception. Presumably with the agreement of his soloist, he sets and extremely slow tempo and the aria lasts 8:46.

This sent me scurrying to my shelves for comparisons. John Eliot Gardiner, in his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage performance takes a mere 5:27 but he is surely too fleet – at his pace the aria sounds like a gambol through the Elysian meadows. So that might seem to suggest that Smith is "simply" old fashioned in his conception. But turn to Fritz Werner’s 1971 performance and you find a tempo that seems to me to be just right – he takes 6:03. Beside Werner I’m afraid Smith sounds laboured. What saves the performance is the sheer beauty and inwardness of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s singing. On its own terms the performance is quite lovely and no admirer of the singer will be disappointed but I just think the basic conception is wrong.

Things are much more satisfactory in the other Bach aria, which is placed at the opposite end of the programme. This aria is from the cantata Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, which is for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Again, Miss Hunt Lieberson’s singing is beautiful and communicative and this time the pace is much more sensible, I think. The conductor here is the composer, John Harbison, who has also had a long association with Emmanuel Music and who, in fact, is currently the Acting Artistic Director. He adopts a slow pace, but this aria can take it. Again comparisons were instructive. Eliot Gardiner’s tempo is almost identical and he takes exactly as long as does Harbison. Werner didn’t record this cantata but another celebrated Bach traditionalist, Karl Richter, did. In his 1976/7 recording he takes 9:34 but his soloist, Julia Hamari, sounds cool besides either of her rivals and she and Richter, whose direction is smooth and relaxed, convey no real sense of trepidation. Nathalie Stutzmann, for Eliot Gardiner, is perhaps a touch more inward than Hunt Lieberson but she’s equally involving and it’s only by the merest whisker that I come down in favour of this present, excellent performance.

The remainder of the disc is devoted to excerpts from Handel’s oratorio, Hercules and these excerpts contain all the music for Dejanira, the wife of the eponymous hero. I presume, though it’s not clear from the documentation, that these extracts are taken from a live account of the complete work.

The role of Dejanira is an exceptionally demanding one, both vocally and emotionally. She is, in Craig Smith’s words, a "monumental character." I can well imagine that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was a pretty formidable presence in the performance of the oratorio for these extracts show us a vivid character portrayal.

In her first aria, "The world when day’s career is run," she is fully the grief-stricken wife, yet she still retains dignity. Much of Dejanira’s music is in moderate or slow tempo but when swifter music arrives, in "Begone, my fears, fly, hence, away," Miss Hunt Lieberson excels in the passagework.

As her jealousy of the captive princess, Iole, begins to take hold and her certainty that Hercules has been unfaithful increases there’s great sadness in the aria ‘When beauty sorrow’s liv’ry wears’ and that is splendidly conveyed here. Particularly outstanding is the account of "Cease, ruler of the day, to rise," where the singing is particularly expressive. Writing of this disc elsewhere, but of another aria in the programme, the critic Michael Kennedy spoke of Miss Hunt Lieberson’s "power to humanise every note and bring the music to new life." How I agree and I’d say that this comment applies even more strongly to this deep aria.

The final excerpt is the Mad Scene. Here Miss Hunt Lieberson is intensely dramatic without ever going overboard. This is extremely demanding music and she performs it vividly and, once again, when the divisions arise she displays fine vocal agility. Hers is a tremendous performance of this recitative and aria and, unsurprisingly, it sparks an ovation from the audience who, otherwise, are commendably silent throughout.

These extracts contain some superb Handel singing. Frequently I was reminded of Dame Janet Baker’s assumption of Handelian roles and I can pay no higher compliment than that.

Despite my reservation over the one Bach item – a reservation that does not concern the singing per se – this is a superb disc that all admirers of this much-missed singer will want to have. And if you’ve not heard Lorraine Hunt Lieberson before, buy this disc and discover for yourself what all the fuss is about.

– John Quinn, MusicWeb International

This stunning new live recording of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (Matthauspassion BWV 244) was recorded in Pisa Cathedral during the Anima Mundi Festival as part of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra’s 2016 tour. Conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the brilliant cast includes James Gilchrist as the Evangelist and Stephan Loges as Jesus. The Trinity Boys Choir adds an exciting color to this recording as well. The Monteverdi Choir was founded by Sir John Eliot Gardner in 1964. The ensemble’s first performance was the Monteverdi Vespers in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. The group has become known worldwide for their stylistic conviction and their ability to perform an extensive repertoire, from Renaissance motets to Classical music of the Twentieth Century.

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REVIEW:

Musically this is a very fine performance. The choir are excellent, of course, with a solid but clear and intimate sound even in the larger choruses, no end of expressive means in the chorales, and a thrilling quickness in the crowd choruses. Gardiner asks for a lot of quiet singing from them and they execute it with a superbly controlled beauty.

The orchestra is as skilled and musical as you like in their obbligatos, and exquisitely responsive in Gardiner's subtle shapings.

The experienced Evangelist of James Gilchrist and Christus of Stephan Loges are not to be faulted, and none of the nine young aria soloists is a weak link; each one lives up to their moment in the drama.

All of these things you will find in many other Matthews, but you will rarely find the same careful relishing of the German text. What really makes this one special, however, is its emotional integrity, coming not from affected theatricality but from a pervading sense of profound sadness. This recording is one of Gardiner's finest achievements.

– Gramophone

This release is an interesting musical journey through the paths that led to Arnold Schoenberg’s composition of his masterpiece for string sextet, Verklarte Nacht.+ The pieces presented on this album, which are diverse and include pieces by Bach, Brahms, and Berg, show development of harmony and tonality from Bach’s era all the way to the late romantic period, when a new harmonic language began to emerge. The string sextet utilized in this recording was formed from the principal players of the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova, and led in this recording by Alessandro Maria Carnelli.

Distinguished Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returned to the BBC Proms in 2018 to present Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Extending the variety already evident in Book I (available on 2.110653), Bach's effortless brilliance and new-found sonorities push harmony and counterpoint further than ever with a combination of ancient and modern styles, church austerity and gallant lightness. Schiff has said that 'no-one combines the sacred and the secular as Bach does', and this is comprehensively demonstrated in Bach's fascinating and challenging sequence. This performance in the Royal Albert Hall was described as 'a musical meditation for our troubled times' by the Independent.

Rising-star period keyboardist Julian Perkins makes his solo Resonus Classics debut with a new recording of the French Suites by J.S. Bach. Seldom recorded on the clavichord, thought to be Bach's keyboard instrument of choice, the Suites' versatile, expressive, and lyrical qualities are expertly revealed by Perkins on this, the gentlest and most intimate of all keyboard instruments. Performing on two instruments by the maker Peter Bavington, the program is completed with two further suites: one earlier partita by Johann Jakob Froberger, and one more contemporary suite by Georg Philipp Telemann, previously attributed to Bach himself.

J.S. Bach composed his St John Passion during his first winter in Leipzig, in advance of the Good Friday Vespers service of 1724. It is written for an intimate ensemble (much more modest than the scoring of his later St Matthew Passion) and was originally to be performed in the Thomaskirche, being moved to the Nikolaikirche at short notice. The music is a vivid representation of Christ's Passion as told in St John's Gospel, constructed of recitatives and choruses, with commentary in reflective chorales, ariosos and arias. The music is, by nature of the story, inherently dramatic, and tells the story of Jesus' death through the words of the Evangelist (tenor), Christ (bass) and a number of smaller roles including Pilate and Peter. Few who attended the service in the Nikolaikirche can have experienced, outside of the opera house, a work on the scale of the St John Passion, one that included such a large proportion of recitative. Today it, together with the St Matthew Passion, is regarded as a masterpiece of devout Lutheran church music, but in it's day it must have sounded radical. That being said, the chorales (or "hymns") within the work were designed to involve everyone in the performance, and these would have been familiar to the congregation (Melchior Vulpius's melody, for instance) - whether or not they ended up singing them. Some of the most affective moments of the work occur in these chorales as well as in the arias, which are remarkable for their range of expression as well as their instrumentation. Take, for instance, the poignant use of the bass viol in the accompaniment of Jesus' last words on the cross in the expressive aria 'Es ist vollbracht'. A masterpiece of expression and theatricality such as the St John Passion requires a masterful interpretation; in this recording, under the baton of Ludwig Güttler - who shot to fame as a Baroque trumpeter - the Hallenser Madrigalisten and Virtuosi Saxoniae rise to the challenge, giving a "technically accomplished and expressive" performance (Gramophone). They are joined by acclaimed tenor Christoph Genz in the role of the Evangelist and Egbert Junghanns as Jesus. Bach's Johannes Passion may be on a smaller scale than the Matthäus Passion, it is by no means less monumental or dramatic. This reissue of a Berlin Classics recording achieves with it's relatively small ensemble and choir an intimate yet powerful performance in which the drama of Christ's suffering is presented in deeply moving arias and chorales. Played on modern instruments the Virtuosi Saxoniae under Ludwig Güttler adhere to the principles of Historically Informed Performance Practice. The soloists include Christoph Genz, Christiane Oelze and Egbert Junghanns.

Presenting four masterworks for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, Jory Vinikour performs on a harpsichord modeled after German harpsichords of Bach’s time, notably Silbermann. Speaking with richness and clarity, this harpsichord was built by Tom and Barbara Wolf. The Italian Concerto and the French Overture, both published by Bach in the 2nd volume of his Clavier Übung, are paired with two other great works - the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, as well as the concerto-like Prelude and Fugue in a minor.

Two-time GRAMMY Award nominated harpsichordist Jory Vinikour is recognized as one of the outstanding musicians of his generation. A highly diversified career brings him to the world’s most important festivals and concert halls as recital and concerto soloist, and partner to several of today’s finest artists. Born in Chicago, Jory Vinikour studied in Paris with Huguette Dreyfus and Kenneth Gilbert on a Fulbright scholarship. First Prizes in the International Harpsichord Competitions of Warsaw (1993) and the Prague Spring Festival (1994) brought him to the public’s attention, and he has since appeared in festivals and concert series throughout much of the world. In 2019, Jory made his debut at the Ravinia Festival, playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. At the Aspen Festival, he conducted Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos.

REVIEW:

There is no doubting the brightness and breeziness of the Italian Concerto's opening Allegro, but what is most impressive is Vinikour’s ability to create a convincing Adagio. The left-hand here can so easily sound awkward, but Vinikour constructs instead a rhythmic bedrock against which the right hand can sing. And sing it does: This is “harpsichord vocalisation” of the type I have rarely encountered, and with a finale that not only glows with life but has a raft of insights. This is wonderful, sometimes even great, Bach playing. 

– Fanfare

It remains an open question whether Bach’s six trio-sonatas fall into the category of keyboard music or chamber music. Bach adopted the then quite common form of the Italian trio-sonata not only for compositional but also for pedagogic reasons. It is also difficult to say how much of the musical material was written specifically for this cycle. At the same time they are exercises demanding an extremely high level of artistry in playing three independent voices with two hands and pedals. The student-originally in this particular case this was probably Wilhelm Friedemann Bach- is to learn thereby not only manual dexterity but also compositional technique. At first sight these pieces may look rather complex, but in fact the upper voices with their richly embellished lines proceed from a quite normal solid harmonic structure that is essentially a product of the basso continuo style. In addition, music for three independent voices provides an excellent opportunity for showing how an organ, with its distinct separate manual and pedal sections, can really sound like three different instruments simultaneously. This music is performed on The Organ of Joachim Wagner in Siedlce, an instrument discovered in 2002 in the village church in Pruszyn.