Proverbially, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, should
you wish to do such a bizarre thing. There are certainly many valid
ways of performing Bach’s church cantatas.
Sigiswald Kuijken’s way in this series, which has now reached
Volume 15, is easily overlooked in view of very fine complete series
from John Eliot Gardiner (SDG), Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt
(Warner Teldec Alte Werk, now only in a bumper 60-CD set) and Helmut
Rilling (Hänssler). That from Masaaki Suzuki (BIS) is now nearing
completion. Yet these Accent recordings are not least among their
brethren. They are distinctive in the use of solo voices for the choral
parts, a practice which has stirred a good deal of controversy, It
works well in the hands of practitioners as adept as Sigiswald Kuijken
and Joshua Rifkin, whose recordings of some of the cantatas with solo
voices are available on two inexpensive 2-CD sets from Decca Oiseau
Lyre.
I recommended Kuijken’s Volume 9, Cantatas for Advent (ACC25309),
in my December 2010 Download Roundup -
here
- but I seem to have lost contact with the series since then. The
quality of that and the present volume serves as a reminder that I
must investigate more of the volumes from this source; those that
have been reviewed on this site have mostly been very well received.
You can try this and the earlier volumes for yourself from Naxos Music
Library if you subscribe to that valuable institution.
The works contained on Volume 15 complete the cycle for the church
year; all are for the latter part of that cycle. The inclusion of
a second booklet entitled ‘CD Edition 2006-2012’, wrapping
up the project, clearly suggests that ‘that’s all, folks.’
Though the final Sundays after Trinity belong to a fairly grey time
with nothing much happening liturgically, these dark Sundays in late
November would have been enlivened by these Bach cantatas.
Cantata No.52 opens with one of Bach’s ‘borrowings’
from an early version of his own Brandenburg Concerto No.1 - why should
he not have raided these concertos when the Margrave to whom he sent
them apparently showed not the slightest interest in them? The playing
of La Petite Bande in this sinfonia suggests that a complete set of
the Brandenburgs from them would be well worth having.
The Lutheran lectionary differed from both the Tridentine Roman rite
and the English Prayer Book, the latter derived from the medieval
Sarum Missal, in providing readings for 27 Sundays after Trinity,
a number reached only in exceptional years when Easter falls very
early. Up to the 24
th the Epistle and Gospel are identical
with English usage, but Nos. 25-27 are provided with different readings,
all anticipatory of Advent.
Cantata No.140 is usually thought of as an Advent work, but the traditionalist
church fathers in Leipzig banned the performance of cantatas at the
Hauptgottesdienst for most of Advent, so this work was actually
composed for the 27
th after Trinity. In Roman Catholic
practice before Vatican II and as prescribed in the English Prayer
Book, the propers for this Sunday were always used on the last Sunday
before Advent and they foreshadow that time, with a collect inviting
God to stir up the hearts of the faithful. In England it came to be
known as ‘stir up Sunday’ and it was traditional to give
the fig pudding a final pre-Christmas stir on that day.
With different readings for the 25
th and 26
th
Sundays, Lutheran practice made it unnecessary always to use those
for the 27
th on the last Sunday before Advent, so Bach
composed only one cantata for this day. It’s a shame that it
can be used on the day only very occasionally, as it’s one of
his best known works, and deservedly so. The Gospels for those final
Sundays before Advent are taken from Matthew 24 and 25, dealing with
the Last Things and the Second Coming; that for the 27
th
tells the story of the Wise Virgins who were ready for the Coming
and the Foolish Virgins who were not.
It’s not so much the Epistle and Gospel texts for the day that
Bach employs, though these stress the need for wakefulness, as the
hymn which gives the cantata its title,
Wachet auf! ruft uns di
Stimme - Sleepers wake! a voice is calling. The tune of that hymn,
which finally blazes out at the end of the cantata, has become almost
as well known as that of
O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden - O sacred
head sore wounded. Each is a re-working of an earlier tune - in this
case an Advent hymn by Philipp Nicolai (1599). These re-workings have
come to be completely Bach’s own, not least for the rocking
dotted rhythm which accompanies the Nicolai tune when it appears in
the opening chorale.
As it happens, Joshua Rifkin’s one-to-a-part recording of Cantata
140 is available on Decca 455 7062, as part of a budget-price twofer,
and that’s the obvious comparison for Kuijken’s performance.
Rifkin is best known as the pianist who made Scott Joplin’s
works famous, so he’s particularly well placed to achieve that
dotted rhythm but Kuijken actually achieves the effect as well, perhaps
rather better.
That chorale illustrates what is the Achilles heel of the solo-voice
approach because, although I appreciate the beautifully clean lines
of the music in this form, it makes a greater impact with more voices
in attendance, as on Volume 52 of the BIS/Suzuki cycle - see my
Download
News 2012/22. With one voice to a part the soloists are even more
exposed than usual; those on this Kuijken recording are good but not
outstanding.
That BIS recording is due for release on hybrid SACD in January 2013
(BIS-SACD-1981) but it’s available to download in advance, in
mp3 and better-than-CD 24-bit lossless. At 6:54, Suzuki adopts a noticeably
more deliberate tempo than Kuijken (6:24) or Rifkin (6:14); John Eliot
Gardiner, on one of the CDs which DG released before abandoning the
project takes 6:19 (with Cantata No.147, recently reissued at budget
price on 478 4231). He’s very slightly faster still, live on
his own label (SDG171: 6:16). All these approaches work well and I
liked all of them, but my preference would be for the greater weight,
both in number of voices and chosen tempo, of the Suzuki.
It would be irrelevant to mention Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s recording,
once available on Teldec Alte Werk coupled with Cantata No.147, unless
you plan to purchase the 60-CD box of his Bach recordings - you could
do worse - or are prepared to download these two cantatas from
classicsonline.com
(at £2.99, a bargain; an even better download bargain comes
from
amazon.co.uk
at £13.49 for Cantatas 138-140, 143-159, 161-163, almost 7 hours
of music with Harnocourt and Leonhardt at the helm). Actually Harnoncourt
is not at his best in this movement - at 7:11 he may be only seconds
slower than Suzuki but, having once made this my recording of choice,
I now think he’s just a little turgid.
I hesitate to choose one version of Cantata No.140 above all others
- all have their virtues. The Decca is an excellent bargain: with
six favourite cantatas on one 2-CD set for around £9, Rifkin
and the Bach Ensemble are well worth having, but I’d have to
place the forthcoming Suzuki top of my tree if the coupling appeals
- a rather illogical collection placing No.140 with cantatas for the
second Sunday after Easter and for the council election, the only
connection being that they all date from 1731.
The couplings on Accent make more sense and all the performances are
thoroughly enjoyable. Both the BIS and Accent come in hybrid SACD
format, though I listened to the BIS as a 24-bit download. Both sound
very well indeed, the Accent placing the performers nearer to the
listener, as is appropriate when such small forces are employed.
Both booklets are informative but the Accent recording also contains
a second booklet with the
raison d’être for the
whole project set out. The main booklet is rather too large to have
fitted in a normal CD jewel case, so the gatefold presentation seems
to have been inevitable, though it makes an awkward size - too large
to fit in a single-CD slot in a cabinet and too small for a 2-disc
slot.
I’ve dwelled on Cantata No.140 because it’s the best known
of the four here, but the virtues of the other works are of the same
order, as are my minor reservations about the occasions when solo
voices don’t quite work for me. With one cantata for each Sunday
of the year under his belt, it appears that Sigiswald Kuijken and
Accent have now pulled the plug on the project; if so, they’ve
gone out in style.
Brian Wilson
Masterwork Index: Bach cantatas BWV
52 & 60 ~~ BWV
116 & 140
[71:51] 
