It’s a measure of the
importance of Whitsun in the Lutheran
calendar that, like Christmas and Easter,
the feast was celebrated over three
days. This latest release in the Bach
Cantata Pilgrimage series consists
of two concerts given on consecutive
days in the same venue, Holy Trinity
Church, Long Melford, in Suffolk details.
This noble church, much lauded by Simon
Jenkins in his book, England’s Thousand
Best Churches, is one of the so-called
Wool Churches and is mainly late-Perpendicular
in style.
Readers who have been
following the reviews of this series
to date will know that one of its many
notable features is the booklet notes.
These are taken from a journal that
Sir John Eliot Gardiner compiled during
the Pilgrimage. It seems to me that
his notes for this present volume are
the finest to date. He writes with particular
eloquence about the feast of Pentecost
and Bach’s music for the festival and
he’s particularly adept on this occasion
at pointing out resonances between the
theology of the feast, Bach’s music
and the venue for the concerts.
The first concert –
and CD – consisted of cantatas for Whit
Sunday itself. Proceedings get off to
a joyous start with the exuberant, trumpet-led
chorus that opens BWV 172. The
rhythms bounce infectiously and the
trumpets ring out festively. The first
aria in this cantata is one of Bach’s
puissant bass and trumpet arias, ‘Heiligste
Dreieinigkeit’. This is authoritatively
dispatched by the German-born Greek
bass, Panajotis Iconomou, a singer that
I can’t recall hearing before, though
he was a finalist in the BBC Cardiff
Singer of the World competition in 2001.
After this Bach provides respite and
refreshment in the form of the easeful
tenor aria, ‘O Seelenparadies’ This
suits the light, heady voice of Christoph
Genz admirably. I also relished the
sensuous performance of the duet for
soprano and alto, ‘Komm, lass mich nicht
länger warten.’ The cantata ends
with two choral movements. First comes
a chorale, which is enriched by a countermelody
for the orchestral violins. Then we
are treated to a most welcome reprise
of the opening chorus, which rounds
off a very fine cantata in a splendid
performance
Next we hear the first
of Bach’s cantatas entitled Wer
mich liebet, der wird mein Wort
halten, BWV 59. The origins
of this piece, which dates from 1723
or 1724, are a little uncertain and
Gardiner’s note is good on this point.
I enjoyed the duet for soprano and bass
with which it opens. The two trumpet
parts that accompany the singers are
surprisingly – and very effectively
– restrained in tone. It’s somewhat
unusual to find a chorale as the third
movement. The bass aria that follows
is a fine creation. It’s a lovely, lyrical
inspiration in which a graceful vocal
line is complemented by an equally suave
violin obbligato. I admired the velvety
tone that Panajotis Iconomou deploys
here. The cantata lacks a closing chorale
and it seems to me that Eliot Gardiner’s
solution is a sensible one. He repeats
the chorale that we heard earlier, but
the choir now sings a different verse
of the same hymn.
Bach revisited the
text of Wer mich liebet, der wird
mein Wort halten again in 1725.
He re-worked some of the music from
BWV 59 in this new cantata, BWV 74,
and, apart from the opening movement,
he set a different text. The opening
movement of BWV 59 is transformed here
into a four-part chorus. The music for
BWV 59’s above-mentioned bass aria,
‘Die Welt mit allen Königreichen’,
is now assigned to a soprano with an
oboe da caccia obbligato. This re-worked
aria, ‘Komm, komm, mein Herze steht
dir offen’, is quite delightful and
I share John Eliot Gardiner’s preference
for this version of the music. The partnership
of soprano and oboe da caccia has been
encountered before, in BWV 1 (Volume
21), and I find it highly effective.
Lisa Larsson is the accomplished soprano
on this occasion. The dazzling tenor
aria, ‘Kommt, eilet, stimmet Sait und
Lieder’ is a real tour de force.
Christoph Genz delivers this virtuoso
piece superbly. As we shall see later,
the mixture of lightness and steel in
his voice is absolutely right for such
music. The cantata also contains a hugely
demanding aria for the alto soloist,
‘Nichts kann mich erretten’, which is
distinguished in particular by the leaps
that the singer is required to make
from one extreme of his register to
the other. It’s a dramatic piece and
Derek Lee Ragin gives a graphic account
of it. However, the timbre of his voice
may not be to all tastes and I must
admit a preference for Robin Blaze’s
performance in Gardiner’s earlier account
of this cantata, to which I shall come
in a moment.
Finally we are given
the superb cantata, O ewiges Feuer,
o Ursprung der Liebe, BWV 34.
This begins with one of the most exciting
choruses in all Bach. This large- scale,
celebratory piece is adorned with silvery
trumpets and makes a most splendid impression
here. The music is like the rushing
of the Pentecostal wind itself
and it’s hard to imagine it done with
greater fervour than in this exuberant
performance. The Monteverdi Choir surpass
themselves with singing that is light
and effervescent yet which has the requisite
weight too. It’s tremendously disciplined
yet it still sounds spontaneous. I can
see that some eyebrows might be raised
at the strong accents in the central
section of the chorus but I love it.
Gardiner says of this chorus: "In
performance it generates colossal energy
and elation" and that’s certainly
the case here.
In the tenor aria that
follows Christoph Genz’s singing reminded
me of the splendid and sensitive work
he did as the Evangelist in the performances
of Christmas Oratorio with which
the Pilgrimage began in December 1999.
This is followed by the heavenly aria
‘Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Seelen’.
From his comments in the notes it’s
clear that Nathalie Stutzmann’s performance
made a deep impression on Sir John and
I’m not surprised. She gives a serene
account of the aria, which I find even
more satisfying than Bernarda Fink’s
fine performance in the earlier DG recording
(see below.) The end of the cantata
contains a stroke of genius, with the
choir bursting in abruptly at the end
of the bass recitativo. This is the
prelude to "a typhoon of an orchestral
finale" as Gardiner describes it,
where choir and orchestra combine to
bring what must have been a memorable
concert to a jubilant end.
Collectors should note
that Gardiner has recorded these four
Whit Sunday cantatas, BWV 34, 59, 74
and 172 before. They were issued by
DG in 2000 as one of the series of discs
issued at the time the Pilgrimage was
in progress (DG 463 584-2). The disc
is still available, I believe, but it
contains different performances, recorded
under studio conditions in April 1999
and all the soloists on the DG disc
are different, with the exception of
Christoph Genz. This earlier disc is
by no means eclipsed by the newcomer.
However, the SDG accounts seem to me
to have that indefinable ‘edge’, which
perhaps stems from the fact that they
are live performances. I’ve highlighted
above a couple of points where I have
a preference for the newcomer. What
clinches it for me, however, is the
opening chorus of BWV 172. Here the
new version has more life and buoyancy.
The tempo is fractionally faster and
the rhythms seem that tiny bit more
urgently sprung. Though the 1999 performance
is excellent its successor is even more
joyous: it’s a real winner.
The next day three
more cantatas were given, all for Whit
Monday. Erhöhtes Fleisch
und Blut, BWV 173 was a re-working
of a 1717 cantata written while Bach
was in Cöthen, to celebrate the
birthday of Prince Leopold, his employer.
In its adapted, liturgical format, as
BWV 173, the cantata may well have been
heard first in Leipzig in 1723 but Eliot
Gardiner’s performance is of a further
re-working of the score that Bach undertook
in 1728. Christoph Genz’s combination
of lightness of voice and steely ring,
already noted in BWV 74, is again a
source of pleasure in the gigue-like
aria, ‘Ein geheiligtes Gemüte.’
The busy alto aria, ‘Gott will, o ihr
Menschenkinder’ is not, perhaps, one
of Bach’s most memorable inspirations.
However, the following duet for soprano
and bass is a delight. It’s something
of a technical tour de force,
as Bach moves through a succession of
scoring, metres and keys. It’s very
well done here.
Also hat Gott
die Welt geliebet, BWV 68 is
a work that, as Eliot Gardiner comments,
"almost seems as if [it] were composed
back-to-front" since it begins
with what he terms a "lyrical and
wistful" chorale and concludes
with a much more dramatic chorus of
the type that one might expect to find
at the start of a cantata. However,
as so often, Bach’s musical inspiration
fits the text perfectly and the gentle,
lilting rhythm of the opening movement
serves to emphasise quiet joy that God
sent his son to redeem the world. In
this splendid performance both the singers
and the instrumentalists are alive to
every nuance of rhythm and dynamics.
Both the second and fourth movements
of the cantata were adapted by Bach
from his ‘Hunt’ Cantata, BWV 208. The
first of these movements is the celebrated
soprano aria, ‘Mein gläubiges Herze’.
Soloist Lisa Larsson conveys appropriately
breathless joy. However, the extremely
fleet tempo chosen by Gardiner may disconcert
some listeners. This performance is
a very different conception from, say,
those by Edith Mathis (for Karl Richter)
or the incomparable Agnes Giebel (for
Fritz Werner) and it’s noteworthy that
both of those performances last for
over four minutes whereas Gardiner whips
through the piece in 2:55. Miss Larsson’s
singing isn’t anything like as full-toned
as the other two ladies I’ve mentioned
and, in fairness, I don’t think the
tempo gives her the chance to be. The
player of the obbligato violincello
piccolo also sounds somewhat pressed.
The other movement taken from the ‘Hunt’
Cantata is the bass aria. Bach gives
his singer an accompaniment of no less
than three gambolling oboes and a bassoon
and I find the effect irresistible.
The strong and energetic closing chorus
is an exciting affair with a cornetto
and three sackbuts doubling the choral
parts.
The final cantata in
what is a slightly short programme is
Ich liebe den Höchsten
von ganzem Gemüte, BWV 174.
The opening sinfonia is a memorable
expansion of the first movement of the
third Brandenburg Concerto. The
expansion is to the scoring: Bach adds
highly important parts for pairs of
horns and oboes to the original string
band and, in Gardiner’s memorable phrase
unleashes a "living bombardment
of instrumental sounds." Even longer
than the sinfonia is the alto aria from
which the cantata takes its title. This
is an outstanding aria and it’s sung
radiantly and expressively by Nathalie
Stutzmann. I had reservations about
Gardiner’s pacing of ‘Mein gläubiges
Herze’ but that’s not the case here.
I feel he adopts an ideal tempo for
this heavenly aria. It flows with a
beautiful inevitability, with two intertwining
oboes enhancing the vocal line. The
concluding chorale uses the same music
that Bach used for the final chorale
of St. John Passion and it makes
for a very satisfying conclusion to
another fine disc.
As this series unfolds
I have come to value increasingly the
Sunday-by-Sunday presentation. Not only
does this seem to me to afford the most
logical way to order an intégrale
of the cantatas, but also it allows
one to appreciate the way in which Bach
responded in different ways at different
stages in his career to the same liturgical
and scriptural themes. That, in itself,
I am finding to be an enriching experience.
The Pilgrim’s sojourn
in Long Melford was another highly successful
artistic enterprise. This pair of discs
has given me enormous pleasure. The
very high standards of performance,
presentation and recorded sound that
were set in earlier releases has been
maintained and I strongly recommend
this latest addition to what is fast
becoming a very important and distinguished
cycle of the cantatas.
John Quinn
Bach
Cantata Pilgrimage themed page
www.solideogloria.co.uk
Lisa Larsson (soprano); Nathalie Stutzmann
(alto); Christoph Genz (tenor); Panajotis Iconomou
(bass) 
