Monteverdi Choir

Recorded in the City of London in 2012, this album features the missing cantatas from the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage: the Ascension Cantatas.

They were recorded live at St Giles Cripplegate (one of the original Pilgrimage venues) in two concerts entirely funded by the generosity of hundreds of donors across the world, following a heartfelt appeal from British comedian Alexander Armstrong.

The quartet of soloists include one of the original Pilgrimage soloists, bass Dietrich Henschel, alongside a new generation of Bach interpreters who have worked with the ensembles since 2000 – making this recording a “bridge” between a Bach tradition started 13 years ago and today.

The Ascension Oratorio “Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen” (BWV11) is a heart-warming, uplifting work. Beginning and ending with two grand festive choruses, it is full of rhythmic swagger, jazz-like nonchalance, stratospheric glitter for the high trumpet and vocal acrobatics for the choir.

“Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen” (BWV43) opens with a glorious, unconventional introduction with high trumpets and drums, and continues with a sequence reminiscent of the opera seria of its time. “Wer da gläubet und getauft wird” (BWV37) focuses on the words of Jesus to his followers and starts with a gentle chorus of choir and orchestra of strings and oboe d’amore. “Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein” (BWV128) features festive opening and closing movements celebrating Christ’s majesty.

SDG185 is packaged in SDG’s usual high-quality book-case. It contains a 32-page booklet with original notes by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and sung texts in German and English.

Parallel to the forthcoming John Eliot Gardiner Collection, here’s a famous compilation of Great Bach Choruses, newly re-presented just in time for Easter 2013.

It comes with a fresh cover, liner notes and texts and translations.

The acclaimed Monteverdi Choir sings a selection of celebrated Bach choruses under their director John Eliot Gardiner, one of the most versatile and exciting conductors of our time. For Gardiner, “Bach is probably the only composer whose music is so rich, so challenging to the performer and so spiritually uplifting to performer and listener alike.”

Selections from the Passions, the Mass in B minor, Christmas Oratorio and several cantatas.

Jean-Baptiste Duval of the Venetian Republic’s French Embassy records that on Christmas Eve 1607, Midnight Mass in St. Mark’s was celebrated by the light of more than one thousand candles, sixty huge torches and silver lamps. He counted no less than eight ‘choirs’ of voices and instruments sounding back and forth across the gilded vaults from the high organ-galleries and the pulpit below. At Mass on Christmas Day the accompaniment was provided by two organs and several other instruments, notably trombones, cornetti and violins blending with the voices of the singers. Duval was too caught up in the ceremony to tell us who composed this magnificent music, but we may reasonably assume that the Christmas music he heard was by one of the resident musicians at St. Mark’s – possibly the maestro di cappella, Giovanni Croce, but more likely the first organist, Giovanni Gabrieli, to whom Croce tended to leave the composition of music for the big festivals. It might also have been by Giovanni Bassano who was in charge of the instrumental ensemble at St. Mark’s, and the composer of the vivacious motet for Christmas Day, Hodie Christus natus est.

Some of John Eliot Gardiner’s very first recordings were made for Decca, before he proceeded to make a series of celebrated recordings for Philips and Deutsche Grammophon. Christmas in Venice was recorded with the Monteverdi Choir and the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and included festive music of the early Baroque by Gabrieli, Monteverdi and Bassano. To this has been added the great ‘Magnificat’ section from the 1610 Vespers of Monteverdi, in Gardiner’s first recording of the work, in January 1974.

‘Once As I Remember’ is John Eliot Gardiner’s recreation of the story of Christmas based on the Springhead Christmas Play. A nativity play made up of music, speech, dance and mime took place almost every Christmas in the Millroom at Springhead, home of the Gardiner family in Fontmell Magna, Dorset. The actors were school-children, farmers, farmhands and local craftsmen and women and teachers, supplemented, as the years went on, by young professional singers from London who came to celebrate the period between Christmas and New Year in Dorset. The play was the brain-child of Marabel Gardiner, who directed the mime, and her husband Rolf, who gave the readings which punctuated the music and action. Their three children, of whom John Eliot Gardiner is the youngest, all took part in one capacity or another.

Taking as its source almost exclusively music performed at those Christmas family and friend gatherings, the selection is amplified with music that Gardiner feels would have been a perfect fit for the time. The range is eclectic, the performances exquisite, and Gardiner writes the extensive and affectionate note that accompanies this release.

Thirty years on from their acclaimed recording for Erato, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir return to the Bach Motets in a new SDG recording, taken from a concert in London last year at the end of a tour which saw performances in Italy, France, The Netherlands and Germany.

The Motets can be seen as some of Bach’s most perfect and hypnotic compositions. Through their extraordinary complexity and density, they require exceptional virtuosity and sensitivity of all the performers.

Each of them is endlessly fascinating, and each inhabits its own sound world, Bach's masterful use of canon, fugue and counterpoint, the brilliant exploitation of double-choir sonorities are perfectly matched by the Monteverdi Choir's virtuosity.

The album is packaged in a hard back book similar to our other releases. It contains 44 pages booklet with original notes by John Eliot Gardiner and texts in German, English and French.

Studio recording, 2002

Studio recording, 1991

“Gardiner brings a concept of the work which not only explores its ineffable mysteries but also savours the magnificence of its architecture. With members of the chorus doubling as soloists, and all singing splendidly, this is in every way enjoyable... A clear first choice among available versions”. (Gramophone, 1986)