This recording is clearly
aimed at a German-speaking audience
and, as such, its contents are almost
predictable. The one piece which I had
not come across, Es wird schon gleich
dunkel, my Austrian friend was able
to recite word-perfect in Tyrolean dialect
from childhood memory:
Es wird scho glei dumpa, es wird ja
schon Nacht,
drumm kimm i zu dir her, mein Heiland
auf d’Wacht.
Wir singen a Liadl dem Liabling, dem
kloan,
du magst ja net schlafn, i hör
di nur woan.
(After much hesitation
the spell-checker has tentatively, and
wrongly, identified that as ‘German
(Germany)’. I don’t think there is a
spell-checker for Tyrolean German.)
Dorothee Mields and
Wolfgang Helbich contributed as soloist
and conductor respectively to the Naxos
CD of Handel’s Dettingen
Te Deum (8.554753); their roles
were praised in a two-handed review
by John Quinn and Terry Barfoot, though
the orchestral contribution to that
CD (not the Bremer Kammer Sinfonie)
was less distinguished. The Kammer Sinfonie
and the Bremen Choir did appear on another
Helbich recording, of Brahms’s
German Requiem (MDG 334 1137)
reviewed by William Kreindler, who felt
that the performance was not ‘romantic’
enough and that the acoustic rather
marred the recording. Robert Hugill
made the Hoffman-Mucher/Bremer Domchor/Kammer
Sinfonie/Helbich combination in Reinthaler’s
Jeptha Recording of the Month
(CPO 999 938-2). Helbich’s recording
of ‘apocryphal’ Bach works has also
received considerable critical acclaim.
(The ‘reconstructed’ St Luke Passion
with the Bremen Baroque Orchestra on
CPO 999 293-2, 2 CDs.) I came to this
recording, therefore, with high expectations
and was not disappointed.
A brief piece of plainsong
opens the recording on a good note.
Veni Redemptor gentium is perhaps
better known in Luther’s translation
as Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,
an Advent-tide invitatory. Several of
the pieces here are more appropriate
to Advent than to Christmas, as the
notes acknowledge. O Heiland, reiß
die Himmel auf is partly based on
the Advent prose Rorate cœli desuper
– drop down dew, O ye heavens – and
Die Nacht ist vorgedrungen begins
by quoting the Epistle for the First
Sunday in Advent, though it ends with
the birth of Jesus.
Sung unaccompanied
by the soprano with all the purity one
might expect of a treble, Veni Redemptor
is followed by an equally restrained
arrangement of Adeste fideles
for soprano and choir with some light
and stylish ornamentation: no need to
pull out all the stops at this point.
My only grouse concerns the pronunciation
of the hard g in words like angelorum,
a personal dislike. The recording captures
the unaccompanied solo and the full
choir equally well. It being almost
50 years since I was last in Bremen
Cathedral, a time when I was much less
concerned with matters acoustic, I cannot
remember how reverberant the building
is. It spoiled the Brahms Requiem
for WK but it is not troublesome on
this recording.
After these opening
pieces, we hear two early works, Eccard’s
Übers Gebirg Maria geht
(1598) and Crüger’s Wie soll
ich dich empfangen? (1649) The former
is, strictly, relevant to the Feast
of the Visitation but forms a regular
part of German carol services and recordings.
In neither work does Helbich attempt
real authenticity, though the notes
point out that the original two-violin
accompaniment is retained for this and
the earlier Crüger setting. The
singing is light and dextrous and the
accompaniment is restrained enough;
neither does anything to raise the hackles
of moderate authenticists like myself.
Die nacht ist vorgedrungen
is sung in an arrangement by the conductor,
Helbich, based on a melody by Joahnnes
Petzold (1939). Both this and the following
Helbich arrangement of O Heiland,
reiß die Himmel auf (nice
to see that CPO have ignored the reformed
orthography and retained the ß
symbol) are in character with the earlier
pieces and the orchestration of O
Heiland even includes some pseudo-baroque
wind sounds. Perhaps the words of this
piece, an invitation to the Saviour
to tear open the heavens, to tear apart
the locked and barred doors and gates
(rather feebly translated as ‘open’
in the booklet) might have warranted
letting rip (pun intended) a little
more.
Bach’s setting of O
Jesulein süß and Prætorius’s
of Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen
continue the mood, with Mields again
striking the right treble-like tone
in the former and the choir singing
with affective simplicity in the latter.
Eccard’s Vom Himmel hoch, a more
elaborate five-part setting of Luther’s
chorale from 1597 and Schein’s setting
of Gelobet seist du, for soprano
and alto soloists and the tenors of
the choir, both strike a rather livelier
tone. The two soloists are well matched
and the recording avoids their being
swamped by the choir without being recorded
unnaturally forward.
The booklet describes
Gelobet seist du as "very
lively" but the tone of the performance
here is again one of restrained liveliness
rather than exuberance. You may find
the English note in the booklet confusing
when it states that "It plays in
a very lively manner with the melody
and has it sound in parts, before the
male voices present it verse by verse."
What this rather muddled translation
means is that fragments of the melody
are presented first ("lasst sie
[die Melodie] in Ausschnitten erklingen")
before being sung verse by verse. The
melody of this Christmas chorale would,
of course, have been thoroughly familiar
to Schein’s hearers and for generations
afterwards, so there is nothing especially
unusual about the practice of partial
quotation of a well-known tune to make
the note-writer describe Schein as "so
originell" (so original) – his
contemporaries Scheidt, Demantius and
(especially) Schütz are at least
equally deserving of the epithet.
In dulci jubilo
receives a fairly measured and thoughtful
performance, slower than most without
ever being allowed to drag. This tone
of tasteful rejoicing typifies the recording
as a whole. If you are looking for outright
exuberance, look elsewhere – you won’t
find it on this track or the next, a
tasteful performance of Bach’s Ich
steh’ an deiner Krippen hier for
soprano and positive organ only, or
the following version of Crüger’s
Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen
for choir and orchestra. Once again,
though the accompaniment could hardly
be described as authentic in tone, it
is restrained enough not to upset any
but the most extreme authenticist.
If, however, you want
to hear In dulci jubilo really
go with a bang, try the final track
of the Prætorius Lutheran Christmas
Mass, performed with spectacular
accompaniment by the Gabrieli Consort
and Players under Paul McCreesh on Archiv
439 250-2, a recording of whose
virtues my colleague DM has recently
eloquently reminded us. Prætorius’s
setting of Vom Himmel hoch on
that CD also offers the one thing which
this CPO recording lacks, exuberance.
The first two Reger
pieces are different in style from the
likes of Eccard and Crüger but
the performances which they receive,
while more overtly ‘romantic’ in tone,
are restrained and the accompaniment
of the first two on the Sauer organ
is perfectly in keeping with the mood
of this recording. The third Reger piece
is an arrangement of the familiar Quem
pastores laudavere, sung a cappella.
Since the notes carefully distinguish
between the positive organ and the Sauer
instrument, it would have been helpful
if the booklet had included organ specifications
of the kind which are commonly contained
in CD notes. Here we are not even told
what the ‘Sauer organ’ is.
These – and a little
more detail about the music – would
have been more useful than the detailed
artist biographies and the information
that the good people of Bremen were
amazed that a Christmas recording was
being made in July. (It happens regularly
at Oxford and Cambridge colleges.) Though
the translator’s English is generally
accurate, it is not quite idiomatic
– she maintains the German rule of order
of adverbs, time-manner-place, which
reads awkwardly in English in places.
‘Die Nacht ist vorgedrungen’ (track
5) is rather awkwardly translated as
‘the night is going its way’, when the
Authorised Version’s ‘the night is far
spent’ is still a familiar English phrase.
The confused note on Schein, referred
to above, is another example of awkward
translation.
The Children’s Choir
join the main choir to perform Helbich’s
own arrangement of Freu dich, Erd
und Sternenzelt. They sing well
in tune with no attempt to sound bogus
coy. Both this and Wilhelm Riem’s Ehre
sei Gott, written some time between
1814 and 1857 when he was Helbich’s
predecessor at Bremen, contrive to sound
in keeping with the works from the 18th
century and earlier. If someone had
told me that the Riem was a chorus from
a rediscovered early Mendelssohn oratorio,
I might well have believed them. Helbich’s
5-part arrangement of Still, still,
still matches that mood particularly
well and it receives an excellent performance,
with some beautifully quiet singing
at the end. The same is also true of
von Othengraven’s of Vom Himmel hoch
(better known as Susani, susani).
The children perform
well again in Engel haben Himmelslieder
(familiar to English-speaking listeners
as ‘Angels from the realms of glory’).
I think I even prefer them to the more
famous Regensburger Domspatzen in this
kind of repertoire. In Lieb Nachtigall
and Kindelein zart the soprano-alto
duet with choir arrangement works very
well, as it does again in the Tyrolean
folksong to which I have already referred.
I’m not in a position to report how
authentic their Tyrolean accents are
– I’m more at home with North German
and Cologne dialects – but it sounds
fine to me; it certainly works well
musically.
Joseph Schnabel’s Transeamus
breathes the same air as the various
Bohemian Christmas folk masses which
have surfaced on recordings from time
to time. (There are several current
recordings of the Ryba Christmas
Mass, including one on Naxos 8.554428
which I have seen recommended. Jonathan
Woolf liked the bargain-price version
on Supraphon
SU 36582. I have not heard any of
those currently available. I can, however,
speak from personal experience of the
performance of the Pascha Christmas
Mass on Campion RRCD1305, an appropriately
peasant-sounding affair.) I suspect
that the original orchestration of Transeamus
may have been more appropriately rough-and-ready
than the setting by Gruber (Joseph,
not the famous Franz of Stille Nacht)
revised by Helbich, performed here,
fine though that is. This is bass Matthias
Gerchen’s only chance to shine as soloist
and his light, baritone-like voice is
well suited to the music.
The Sicilian folksong
O Sanctissima is sung to the
tune of the more familiar (to Germanic
ears) O du fröhliche. Stille
Nacht, which has almost attained
folksong status over the years, is performed
in its original setting, soprano and
alto with guitar accompaniment. (Remember
the story of the non-functional organ.)
It receives an affective, though not
over-schmaltzy performance and these
last two works round the CD off well.
We might have expected a more rousing
send-off, but this isn’t that kind of
recording: despite the claim in the
booklet that this is a "bright
and colourful bouquet" of works
"of a great variety", the
general tone is, as I have indicated,
thoughtful and reflective.
Granted that this recording
is not really aimed at the Anglophone
world, that it offers measured rather
than exuberant performances and that
it is fairly predictable of its kind,
prospective purchasers may go ahead
with confidence, especially if they
wish to sample some less familiar repertoire,
well performed and recorded. If, however,
you haven’t yet purchased McCreesh’s
Archiv recordings of Prætorius’s
Christmas Mass (see above) or
Schütz’s Christmas Vespers,
(463 046-2) go for one or both of those
first. Watch this space for my take
on the Schütz, my next priority
for review – or get your order in without
waiting.
Brian Wilson
Aimed at a German- rather than an English-speaking
audience and pensive rather than exuberant
... see Full Review
Dorothee Mields (soprano); Waltraud Hoffmann-Mucher
(alto); Matthias Gerchen (bass); Beate
Röllecke (organ continuo); Tim Fischer
(guitar); Wolfgang Baumgratz (Sauer-organ);
Bremer Domchor (Bremen Cathedral Choir);
Mädchenchor der Bremer Domsingschule
(Girls’ Choir of Bremen Cathedral Music
School); Kammer Sinfonie Bremen/Wolfgang
Helbich 
