Giovanni GABRIELI (c.1554/7-1612)
Motet: Hodie Christus natus est a8 [2:54]
Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)
Organ Prelude: Gott, durch deine Güte, BWV600 [1:00]
Cantata: Christen, ätzet diesen Tag, BWV63 [28:12]
Organ Prelude: Vom Himmel hoch, BWV606 [0:42]
Congregational Chorale: Vom Himmel hoch [2:58]
Organ Prelude: Fuga sopra il Magnificat, BWV733 [3:43]
Magnificat in E-flat, BWV243a [34:20]
Organ Prelude: Puer natus in Bethlehem, BWV603 [1:36]
Congregational Chorale: Puer natus in Bethlehem [2:43]
Julia Doyle, Joanne Lunn (soprano)
Clare Wilkinson (mezzo)
Nicholas Mulroy (tenor)
Matthew Brook (bass-baritone)
Dunedin Consort/John Butt
rec. Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh, Scotland, 27-31 July 2014. DDD/DSD
Texts and translations included
LINN CKD469 SACD [78:08]
Reviewed as 24/96 download from Hyperion.
Also available in mp3 and 16-bit lossless and additionally in 24/192
format and on SACD from Linn.
Both sources include pdf booklet. The first 1000 purchases of the SACD
qualify for a bonus CD of highlights from these performers’ recording
of Handel’s Messiah (CKD285).
The headline news is that, though I have many other
very fine recordings of the two major works, Cantata No.63 and the E-flat
version of the Magnificat with the Christmas interpolations,
this new recording just about outdoes them all, including a very fine
bargain version from Philippe Herreweghe which couples it with Cantata
No.63 (Harmonia Mundi D’Abord HMA1951782, budget price: Recording of
the Month – review
– Download
News 2015/5).
This is not the first of John Butt’s Bach recordings to be reconstructions
of actual liturgical celebrations that might have occurred during his
time in Leipzig: in this case we have a credible reconstruction of his
first Christmas Vespers in the Nikolaikirche in 1723.
I’m not going to renege on my recommendation of the Herreweghe, but
John Butt has gone one further and created a sense of occasion by opening
with a Gabrieli motet and interpolating appropriate organ preludes and
congregational hymns. With a CD filled almost to bursting, a few items
have had to be left out, but these can be downloaded
free from Linn: the organ prelude Der Tag der ist so freudenreich,
BWV650, the congregational pulpit hymn Ein Kindelein so loebelich
and the final collect, responsory and blessing. It’s a bit fiddly to
insert these tracks in the right place – perhaps Hyperion could have
included them with the download. I put them into a sub-folder labelled
‘bonus tracks’ and Winamp read them as tracks 31-34, after the main
tracks 1-30. If you download the ‘digital de luxe’ version from Linn
the tracks are in the right places.
The opening work, an 8-part motet by Giovanni Gabrieli, is included
in a North German collection of the time: it would have been sung by
the very best singers from the Thomasschule, though it seems unlikely
that they would have been as accomplished as the team on the new recording
– the five named soloists plus Katie Schofield, Malcolm Bennett and
Dominic Barberi, with organ, cello and violone accompaniment, who get
the album off to a flying start.
The organ pieces are just as welcome as the vocal works. It was as
a performer of Bach’s organ music on the Harmonia Mundi label that John
Butt first came to my attention: his recording of the Schübler Chorales
and preludes and fugues on
HMU907249 and of the Trio Sonatas on HCX3957055
are both download only now – from Presto: click the catalogue numbers
for the links. The Trio Sonatas were most recently available at budget
price, so Presto’s £4.98 (mp3) or £5.98 (lossless) is reasonable. Subscribers
can stream in lossless sound from classicsonlinehd.com,
but I can’t recommend downloading there for £12.24 each.
The first organ piece here, the Prelude BWV600, from Orgel-büchlein,
is well up to the standard of those earlier recordings and the Greyfriars
organ, restored in 1990, makes a good baroque sound. The booklet lists
this as Gott, durch deine Güte, but it’s also known as Gottes
Sohn ist kommen, which is more appropriate to Christmas, and the
download track carries the latter title. Nor are the remaining organ
pieces any less well performed. As John Butt notes in the booklet these
preludes were intended not to be played one after the other in a 70-minute
CD programme, as we normally hear them now, but to set the mood for
a following choral work.
I’ve heard some very fine recordings of Cantata No.631 but
this knocked me off my perch from the start, capturing the joyful spirit
of the work more than any other that I know. Bach brought this cantata
with him from Weimar and it may have seemed a little too exuberant for
the staid burghers of Leipzig. A good performance should have had the
congregation dancing in the aisles – the text exhorts them to join the
round dance: Kommt, ihr Christen, kommt zur Reihen. Butt’s interpretation
might have tempted them to climb up the organ loft but such was not
the staid Lutheran way in Bach’s day, despite Martin Luther’s own love
of joyful music and his expectation of joining the Reihe (round
dance) in Heaven.
The performance of the Magnificat has the same dancing qualities
as the Cantata, though it’s the latter that really persuaded me to make
this a Recording of the Month. You may not wish to have the Christmas
interpolations all year round, so they have been separately tracked.
That’s fine if you can be bothered to programme them out but I prefer
to keep them. The practice of interpolating other music in the Magnificat
at Christmas, in Latin and German, had been common for some time before
Bach: Hieronymus Prætorius’s Magnificat Quinti toni, which features
on a very fine recent recording, interpolates a number of extra verses:
Joseph, lieber Joseph, Omnes nunc concite, Hodie apparuit
and, verse by verse, In dulci jubilo. (A Wondrous Mystery:
Stile Antico, Harmonia Mundi HMU807575).
I listened to the recording as a 24/96 download and the sound is every
bit as impressive as the performances. Past experience of comparing
24-bit Linn downloads and their SACD equivalents suggests that it’s
equivalent to the HD stereo layer of the disc. It’s also available
in mp3 and 16-bit lossless from Hyperion and Linn and additionally in
24/192 from Linn.
The notes in the booklet are extremely valuable, especially in setting
the music in liturgical context and in arguing the case for the use
of the older Tief-Kammerton or ‘French pitch’, approx. A=392,
for strings and woodwind, thus allowing the trumpets to perform in the
higher ‘baroque pitch’ Kammerton or Cammerton of 415 in
their native key of D, as they do in the other version of the Magnificat
in D. D at the higher pitch = E-flat at the lower. Those seeking further
elucidation will find a helpful article on this complex subject in the
Oxford Companion to Music (Pitch, 3).
Even if you have another recording of either, or even both, of the main
works you will be bowled over by this new recording. It’s top of my
Christmas 2015 list so far and I expect it to remain so.
1 To name but a few: Karl Richter (DG Archiv 4791712, 4
CDs), John Eliot Gardiner (DG Archiv E4635892 and SDG174, the latter
download only), Masaaki Suzuki (BIS-CD-881) and Philippe Herreweghe
(listed above).
Brian Wilson
Previous review:
John
Quinn (Recording of the Month)
