Bach, J S: Cantata BWV172 'Erschallet, ihr Lieder'

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood’s ‘A Bach Notebook for Trumpet’ is a celebration of the music of the famous Johann Sebastian and ten other lesser-known Bachs, re-imagined for the combination of trumpet and piano.

Bach specialist Daniel-Ben Pienaar has arranged music from a great uncle, close cousins, distant cousins, and five sons, all related to the great J. S. Bach in a wholly unique recital programme.

Aesthetic passions drive the repertoire and performance choices as the duo explore vocabularies not usually associated with trumpet and piano chamber music: brushing up against ‘period’ gesture, ornamentation and articulation, whilst also co-referencing less fashionable inspirations from the past, including those judged ‘romantic’ in coloration, whether in the use of the pedal, rubati or articulation.

Jonathan is an established authority on Bach interpretation, particularly as it challenges and refocuses historical  perspectives on ‘performance practices’ and how recordings of the past can influence current priorities and tastes.

As a trumpet player and recording artist, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood has attracted plaudits from the press; his producing career has resulted in over 200 recordings and several awards including Diapasons d’Ors, eight Gramophone Awards and many nominations.

Jonathan broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio 3 and is in demand as an essayist for EMI, Warner, Deutsche Grammophon and other major record labels.

Daniel-Ben is active as a recitalist and chamber musician. He has received great acclaim for his interpretations of Bach’s keyboard music: ‘Pienaar produces a breathless, highly energised reading’ Gramophone on his Goldberg Variations.

Founded by Masaaki Suzuki in 1990, the Bach Collegium Japan began its landmark series of Bach's cantatas in 1995. In order to celebrate the ensemble's 20th anniversary – and indeed the 15th anniversary of the start of the cantata cycle – Suzuki has now devised a compilation of some of his personal favourites among the choral movements from the cantatas. The programme of the disc follows the Lutheran liturgical calendar, beginning with Advent and ending with the Feast of the Reformation, a feast which commemorates the day (31st October 1517) on which Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, the spark that would set off the Reformation in Germany. This disc thus traverses the full range of events and emotions that constitute the church year, from the joyous expectancy of Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, by way of the Passion of Christ, to Bach's elaboration on Martin Luther's own hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. In his own comments to the ample selection, Masaaki Suzuki gives his reasons for choosing these particular movements, and also offers two further favourites 'beyond the church year'. These are both pieces which in different ways transcend the boundaries of calendars, churches, religions and even nations: Bach's universally loved setting of Jesus bleibet meine Freude, and Dona Nobis Pacem, the heartfelt prayer for peace for the world from the B minor Mass.

The liturgical year with Johann Sebastian Bach: in celebration of the 800th anniversary of the Thomanerchor Leipzig (St Thomas’s Boys Choir Leipzig) Rondeau Production is publishing a ten-part CD series which presents a selection of cantatas for the liturgical year.

In Leipzig, music for the liturgical year has an especially well kept tradition: up to the present day the Thomanerchor Leipzig (St Thomas’s Boys Choir Leipzig) and the Gewandhausorchester (Gewandhaus Orchestra) join forces each week in the performance of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas at the church of St Thomas.

In time for the choir’s week of festivities, on 19 March 2012 Rondeau Production is publishing the CD with Pentecost cantatas. Three of Johann Sebastian Bach’s four cantatas for Whit Sunday, Erschallet, ihr Lieder BWV 172, Wer mich liebet der wird mein Wort halten BWV 74, and O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe BWV 34, are recorded on the most recent disc.

The current cantor at St Thomas, Georg Christoph Biller, is fortunate to have boys from the choir’s own ranks performing the soprano and alto solos. He sets the three cantatas into context with hymns from Erhard Bodenschatz’s Florilegium selectissimorum Hymnorum.

In Lutheran Germany of Bach’s time the Whitsun or Pentecost festival was celebrated like other high ecclesiastical feasts on three consecutive days, Sunday through to Tuesday. Music was performed in the services on all three feast days and Bach usually wrote cantatas for each of them. There were nine of these Whitsun cantatas altogether, and this collection presents a representative cross-section: BWV 172 for the Sunday and then BWV 68 and BWV 174, respectively, for the Second Day of Pentecost, and BWV 175 for the Third Day. As is typical for works to be performed on the high feasts, they invariably display a rich instrumental configuration: BWV 172 includes trumpets and timpani; BWV 68 makes use of 3 oboes, violoncello piccolo, and supporting cornetto and trombones; and BWV 174 features 2 horns, 3 oboes, along with an unusual complement of nine concertato strings.

These recordings have been selected from the award-winning cycle of recordings of the complete cantatas of J. S. Bach by Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir. The featured soloists are sopranos Barbara Schlick and Deborah York, altos Kai Wessel and Bogna Bartosz, tenor Christoph Pregardien, and bass Klauss Mertens

This 2-CD set with The Purcell Quartet and a distinguished group of soloists is the third in a series devoted to Bach’s early cantatas and the second focussing on the Weimar period. On an earlier release, International Record Review wrote, ‘The Purcell Quartet and guests are most welcome: even the most distinguished of period performers with larger ensembles can’t achieve the intimacy that the forces here have at their disposal’.

Uniquely, but following historical precedent, The Purcell Quartet employs single voices, rather than a choir. The stance is still controversial, but recreates the works as they would have been performed originally, and therefore stands out from the more conventional approach, the product of subsequent developments of massed choral singing. Accompanied by The Purcell Quartet and their guest instrumentalists are the vocal soloists Emma Kirkby, Michael Chance, Charles Daniels and Peter Harvey. Individual vocal and instrumental lines are allowed to be heard to their full effect, which greatly enhances the impact and meaning of the cantata texts.

This programme contains three cantatas dating from 1714, the year in which Bach was promoted to the post of Konzertmeister at the ducal court in Weimar. His responsibilities now included the composition of concerted sacred vocal music, including the writing of cantatas at regular intervals for Sundays and feast days of the liturgical year. Bach performed all three works collected on this pair of discs several times. They are presented here as they would have been heard in Weimar at their 1714 performances. The first two works, Erschallet, ihr Lieder, BWV 172 and Himmelskönig, sei willkommen, BWV 182, have much in common in tone and atmosphere: both are essentially jubilant at the prospect of the heavenly eternity awaiting the good Christian at the end of his life, and the images of the Trinity led Bach to employ three trumpets in BWV 172. In BWV 182 there is, instead of trumpets and drums, an intimate conversation principally between violin and recorder. The jubilant mood of these two cantatas is juxtaposed with that of Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21, which exudes a feeling of despair, only for Bach to bring in trumpets and drums at the end as hope gradually begins to dawn.

The Weimar cantatas of J.S. Bach form an exceptional body of work and it is thrilling to hear them performed in a way that Bach would have recognised, and by artists respected in the early music field. We offer this set at the price of two CDs for one.