Gardiner Bach Cantatas series

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.

This box set is a collection of Cantatas for the entire Christmas season from our award-winning series of recordings from the 2000 Bach Cantata Pilgrimage.

It features a cast of stellar soloists including Magdalena Kožená, Bernarda Fink, Michael Chance, James Gilchrist, Christoph Genz, etc. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloist give their customary brilliant performances, making this release a must-have gift this Christmas season.

It includes some of Bach’s best known cantatas, including the glorious Christen, atzet diesen Tag (CD1), the festive and brilliant Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (CD2) , the infectiously rhythmic Ich freue mich in dir (CD3), Gelobet seist du (CD1) and many other “jewels” which glow with that special sense of expectation that is the hallmark of Bach’s Christmas music.

Packaged in a clamshell box, it contains 6 CDs in individual sleeves and a booklet with collected notes by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and texts in German and English.

Recording locations: Tooting/ Winchester, November 2000.

SDG is delighted to release Volume 12 - Cantatas for the twenty-second and twenty-third Sundays after trinity.

John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists performed both of these programmes in England: at All Saints church in Tooting and at Winchester Cathedral, in November 2000.

The soloists include James Gilchrist, Peter Harvey and Joanne Lunn.

The highlight of this album is Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (“Sleepers, wake”) – one of Bach’s best known cantatas, and one that has long been part of the Monteverdi Choir’s repertoire. It is described as “a cantata without weaknesses, without a dull bar, technically, emotionally and spiritually of the highest order”.

Ich armer Mensch, ich Sündenknecht (“I, wretched man, I slave to sin”) is Bach’s only cantata for solo tenor still in existence. It is sung movingly by James Gilchrist.

Of three cantatas on the parable of the unjust steward (BWV 55, 89, 115), Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit (“Prepare yourself, my soul”) is considered to stand out for its subtle instrumental writing and spellbinding arias, which evoke the yearning of the soul for divine mercy.

The recording in Tooting (CD1) is the only one in the whole series that wasn’t recorded live: the original concert took place in Eton chapel, right under the Heathrow airport flight path, so we had to try and recreate the same conditions in a quieter place.

This album is packaged with a separate index sheet of the Cantata series.

“This ongoing recording project ranks as one of the musical events of the decade.” The Observer

“One of the most ambitious musical projects of all time” Gramophone

Recording locations: Recorded live in Weimar/ Leipzig/ Hamburg, December 1999/ January 2000.

SDG174 is the much awaited last volume of the Bach Cantatas Pilgrimage, one of the most talked about musical events of the last decade.

This is an anthology of the Christmas period, combining cantatas for Christmas Day and the Epiphany.

It features ten acclaimed soloists, including Magdalena Kožená, Bernarda Fink, Michael Chance, James Gilchrist and Christopher Genz.

The album opens with Christen, ätzet diesen Tag (“Christians, engrave this Day”), which was performed on Christmas Day 1999 to launch the year-long pilgrimage. This is one of Bach’s best known cantatas. The accompagnato recit was sung by Bernarda Fink to great acclaim.

Gloria in Excelsis Deo, the song of the angels at the birth of baby Jesus, is best known as the Gloria in the B Minor Mass.

Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen (“All they from Sheba shall come”) describes the procession of the three magi. Bach conveys the majesty of the scene by using high horns, and the recorders and oboes da caccia create an Eastern-like atmosphere.

The cantatas on this album display a great variety of dramatic expression. Both Mein Liebster Jesus ist verloren (“My dearest Jesus is lost”) and Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen (”Beloved Jesus, my Desire“) tell the same story, but in a different style, expressing different emotions.

This album was recorded at Weimar’s Herderkirche, Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche and Hamburg’s Hauptikirche St Jakobi.

SDG174 is packaged with a separate index sheet of the Cantata series.

“This ongoing recording project ranks as one of the musical events of the decade.” The Observer

“One of the most ambitious musical projects of all time” Gramophone

Recorded live in Genoa (Cattedrale di San Lorenzo) and London (Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich), November 2000.

Cantatas for the twentieth and twenty-first Sunday after Trinity, recorded live in November 2000. John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists head to Italy to give two concerts, one in the cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa and one the following day in the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.

We join John Eliot and his forces for the first of these two concerts - a performance of three little-known secular–imaged cantatas in the stunning Gothic cathedral of San Lorenzo. The soloists are internationally acclaimed and include Magdalena Kožená, Sara Mingardo, Christoph Genz and Peter Harvey.

The concert opens with the solemn BWV 162 Ach! ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe (Ah! I see, now, that I have gone to the feast), a cantata brought to life by Salomo Franck’s strongly worded libretto. Bach thrives upon Franck’s love of poetic compounds and polar opposites. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the opening bass aria where we get references to life and death, rays of heaven and fires of hell.

There then follows BWV 49 Ich geh und suche mit Verlangen (I go and seek with longing), a dialogue cantata geared towards creating an atmosphere depicting the beauty of the soul. In his booklet notes, Gardiner states that the best movement is the fourth which he believes to be “a kind of early version of Bernstein’s ‘I feel pretty.’ ”

We then travel back to London for a concert in the Old Royal Navel College Chapel, Greenwich, a perfect architectural and acoustic setting. Bach composed four outstanding works for this Sunday, marvellously contrasted and subtly differentiated by mood and instrumentation.

The earliest of these, BWV 109 Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben! (Lord, I believe, help Thou mie unbelief), opens the concert. The wonderful opening chorus, a setting of words from St Mark’s gospel, emphasises the tension between belief and scepticism in such personal terms that one wonders whether it mirrors Bach’s own private struggles of faith.

This theme of distress and the yearning for forgiveness continues in BWV 38 Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (Out of deep distress I cry to you) where Bach, in the final chorus, emphasises this mood by giving all voices full orchestral doubling, including the rare usage of four trombones! After all that accumulated intensity, BWV 98 Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, dating from November 1726, is exceptionally genial.

“This ongoing recording project ranks as one of the musical events of the decade.” The Observer

Recording locations: Recorded live: Paris/Zürich, July 2000

Cantatas for the second and third Sunday after Trinity, recorded live in July 2000.

Performing to an audience of more than 1200, we join Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists at the halfway point of their Bach Cantata pilgrimage for a concert in one of the great architectural landmarks of Catholic Europe, the Basilisque Saint-Denis (Basilica Cathedral of Saint Denis).

Featuring internationally acclaimed soloists including James Gilchrist, Lisa Larsson, Daniel Taylor and Stephen Varcoe, the programme opens with BWV 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Oh God, look down from Heaven), based upon Martin Luther’s German hymn adaptation of Psalm 12. The psalm describes how easily man is led astray by heresy and Bach deals with such grim subject matter by resorting to composing in an archaic motet style. The result is austere beauty and has the engrossing quality of ritualised worship. There then follows BWV 10

Schütz’s superb motet Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes (The heavens are telling of God in glory) follows. This is a motet that John Eliot remembers fondly, since it is a work he has known since he was six and he can still hear his father’s ringing tenor declaiming its powerful text. The concert ends with Bach’s prodigious cantata, BWV 76 Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, a lengthy and complex bipartite cantata, comprising fourteen movements and divided into two equal parts.

We then head to Zürich to hear Gardiner and his Monteverdi forces perform within the stunning Fraumünster Kirche, distinctive for its slender, blue spire. They open with the two-part Weimar Cantata BWV 21 Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (I had much affliction), considered to be ‘…one of the most extraordinary and inspired of Bach’s vocal works’, as stated by John Eliot Gardiner in his booklet note. There then follows BWV 135 Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder (O, Lord, I poor sinner). This is superb music and Bach concludes with a rousing ‘Glory to God’, to the Passion chorale by Cyriakus Schneegaß (1597).

With only two cantatas for this Sunday in existence, the concert ends with Bach’s so-called Triple Concerto, BWV 1044 (Concerto for flute, violin and harpsichord). Despite its similarity to Brandenburg Concerto No.5, it seems to inhabit a different stylistic milieu to that of Bach’s other concerti – one much close to that of his eldest sons.

“This ongoing recording project ranks as one of the musical events of the decade.” The Observer

Recording locations: Recorded live: Lund, Leipzig, Thomaskirche, Leipzig October 2000.

Gardiner’s award-winning Bach Cantata series on Soli Deo Gloria continues with volume 9 in the series featuring Cantatas for the seventeenth and eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. Recorded live in October 2000. We join John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists on their Bach Cantata pilgrimage in the spectacular dark brown gothic Allhelgonakyrkan (All Saints Church) in Lund.

The concert explodes into action as the long fanfare-like ritornello for solo trumpet and strings herald the opening of BWV 148 Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens (Give the Lord the Glory due his Name). This grand opening leads the way for the chorus to enter with a rousing delivery of the psalm verse, ‘Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.’ This is then followed by the chorale cantata BWV 114 Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost (Ah, dear Christians, be brave), from Bach’s second Leipzig cycle. We then hear BWV 47 Wer sich selbst erhöhet, der soll erniedriget werden (Whoever himself exalteth shall be abashed) which opens with a mighty opening movement for chorus. The programme ends with the most instrumentally conceived of Bach’s double-choir motets, BWV 226 Der Geist hilft unser Schwacheit auf, (The Spirit Helpeth Our Infirmities). It is also the only motet composed by Bach for which a specific purpose is known – the funeral service of JH Ernesti, the rector of the Thomasschule in Leipzig.

We then travel to the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and open the programme with BWV 96 Herr Christ, der ein’ge Gottessohn (Lord Christ, the only Son of God). Next comes BWV 169 Gott soll allein mein Herze haben (God alone shall have my heart), the last and considered by many to be the most consistently beautiful of Bach’s Cantatas for solo alto. This is then followed by the superb choral cantata BWV 116 Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ, first performed on 26 November 1724. The choir then retreat to the very crucible where for the last twenty-seven years of his life Bach worked. They form a horseshow around his final resting place and sing a cappella what legend has identified as Bach’s very last piece, BWV 668 Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit, the so-called Deathbed Chorale.

John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists continue on their Bach pilgrimage and head to Ansbach to perform at the prestigious Ansbach Bach Festival. The programme opens with BWV 9 Es ist das Heil uns kommen her. This is then followed by the well known chamber cantata BWV 170 Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, expertly sung by internationally renowned counter-tenor, Michael Chance. A highlight is the first alto aria - an aria of pure enchantment, which tells, through rich and passionate music, that “pleasant rest” can be attained only though union with heaven. The programme ends with the very moving funeral motet Der Gerechte kommt um, attributed to Bach, an incredibly beautiful five-voiced Latin motet composed by Johann Kuhnau. The magnificence of this motet made this very popular with both the choir and orchestra thereby resulting in it being used as a regular encore on the Bach Cantata pilgrimage.

Thirty miles east from the hustle and bustle of a busy Edinburgh hosting its world famous festival, we join John Eliot and the Monteverdi forces in the collegiate church of St. Mary’s situated in the modest, tranquil market town of Haddington, Scotland. BWV 186 Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht, comprises eleven movements and is structured in two parts. A movement that stands out is the glorious duet for soprano and alto (No.10), in which the crucial injunction ‘Sei, seele, getreu!’ (‘O soul, be true!’) is reserved until the last two bars. We then hear BWV 107 Was willst du dich betrüben, a chorale cantata set per omnes versus, that is, with all the verses of a hymn set unaltered. Bach here cleverly overcomes the limitations of being confined to a rigidly structured hymn without monotony or repetitiveness through the usual devices of changing the voice type in the arias, the key and the metre. The final chorale, BWV 187 Es wartet alles auf dich is again structured in two parts and comprises of music that is both gentle and seductively beautiful. Bach clearly supports this belief by parodying the music of this cantata a decade later in his G minor Missa (BWV 235).

Recording locations: Naarden and Southwell, February 2000

As the solemn Lenten period prior to Easter approaches, Soli Deo Gloria releases the next instalment in its award-winning Bach Cantata series with a double album featuring cantatas for the second (Sexagesima) and third (Septuagesima) Sunday before Lent, recorded live in February 2000.

The programme opens with Bach’s first Leipzig cycle, BWV 144 Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin. Following the magnificent bold and uncompromising opening, the moral of the cantata is beautifully portrayed in Murre nicht, lieber Christ - an aria set as a minuet for alto over a pulsating string accompaniment to represent the mutterings of dissatisfied Christians.

In contrast, the engaging five-movement work for solo soprano, oboe and strings, BWV 84 Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke, has no mention of the disgruntled work-force, but only of being ‘content with my good fortune that dear God bestows on me.’ Gardiner stresses this sentiment by making the choir sing the final chorale Ich leb indes in dir vergnüget (‘I live meanwhile content in thee’) a cappella and quietly.

We then head to Southwell Minster for the three Cantatas for Sexagesima. The first two focus upon the Gospel theme of the day, the parable of the sower (Luke 8: 4-15) Superbly exemplified in BWV 18 Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt where Bach adds two extra viola parts to the score. The magically dark-hued sonority four violas bring stresses the overwhelming power of the Word and forms ‘an ideal seed-bed in which God’s word may germinate and prosper.’

The final volume to be released this year in John Eliot Gardiner’s award-winning Bach cantata pilgrimage series on SDG. Recorded in January 2000 within the grand neo-Gothic Gethsemanekirche in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, the programme features Cantatas for New Year’s Day and for the Sunday after New Year. In contrast to the modest BWV 143 Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele II that opens the programme, Bach begins BWV 41 Jesu, nun sei gepreiset with the fantastically grand opening chorus, Jesu, nun sei gepreiset. The jewel in this particular cantata is the tenor aria ‘Woferne du den edlen Frieden’ (No.4), wonderfully rich and descriptive. BWV 171 Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm is equally magnificent as a cantata replete with emotional and thematic contrast. As the tenor (No.4) pleads for salvation in BWV 153 Schau, lieber Gott, wie meine Feind, crying ‘…help, Helper, help! Save my soul!’, we are reminded that our afflictions have been heard as the alto (No.8) sings of the ‘blessed rapture and eternal joy’ of heaven. BWV 58 Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid II continues this theme of the beleaguered Christian. This is beautifully illustrated through the use of the distressed, persecuted soul (soprano) in dialogue with a guardian angel, by implication, Jesus (bass).