Bach, J S: Cantata BWV56 'Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen'

For long out of the catalogue, Marriner’s (Philips) recording of Bach’s B Minor Mass, with an array of splendid soloists, returns to circulation. Its coupling is the first release on CD of this recording of the deeply moving Cantata BWV 56 ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen’. It was one of two (extant) Bach cantatas for bass voice alone (the other being BWV 82 ‘Ich habe genug’: Shirley-Quirk’s recording with Marriner appears on Decca Eloquence 476 2684). The two items were recorded thirteen years apart, the Cantata in April 1964 and the Mass in June-July 1977. The partnership of Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is possibly the most recorded of all partnerships in recorded classical music. This pioneering 2CD set is issued in celebration of the Academy’s 50th anniversary this year and these recordings form part of a series of Marriner reissues on Eloquence.

Marriner’s glorious recording of Bach’s Mass in B minor returns to the catalogue – at budget price for the first time.

The Cantata BWV 56 receives its first release on CD.

Forms part of a series of recordings with Marriner and the Academy.

Alongside some magnificent, less well-known cantatas, this set contains two of Bach’s most famous works: the “Kreuzstab” Cantata BWV 56 for solo bass, expressing the desire to relieve Christ of the burden of the Cross, is an intimate yet intensely dramatic work, poignantly sung by Peter Harvey; BWV 80 “Ein feste Burg” is, by contrast, a monumental choral cantata celebrating the most intrinsically Lutheran festivity, the Feast of the Reformation - from the colossal, initial choral fugue to the final chorale it is a veritable rollercoaster!

Hermann Prey has delighted opera audiences with his humour and the way he is able to bring characters to life. His lyric baritone voice is both noble and mellow. This CD presents him in some of his classic roles, including Figaro and Papageno.

Johann Sebastian Bach was an absolute master of all the musical forms of his time except opera, which he never had the opportunity to compose.

Yet in his sacred vocal and choral music he fully assimilated the expressive potential of secular Baroque vocal music with his abiding respect for the music, both sacred and profane, of his predecessors.

This disc, a representative selection of his sacred music, will appeal both to the experienced music lover and to those just beginning to discover Bach’s immortal music.

As on two other recent instalments (Vols 37 & 38) in his Cantata cycle, Masaaki Suzuki here concentrates on the so-called solo cantatas, providing an opportunity for two of the highly acclaimed soloists of this series, Carolyn Sampson and Peter Kooij, to shine even more brightly.

Of the two cantatas for soprano, Ich habe genung (BWV82) is among the best-known of all of Bach’s cantatas, and was evidently held in high regard from an early stage. It was originally set for bass (and appears as such on Volume 38), and source materials show that Bach performed it at least four times. Bach’s wife Anna Magdalena must also have been especially fond of it: a partial arrangement for soprano and harpsichord was included in her second Klavierbüchlein. Ich bin vergnügt (BWV84) is a slighter work in which the oboe plays an important soloistic part. Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, the weightier of the bass cantatas, is a meditation on the cross of Jesus, but also on the suffering and need that mankind must bear. The texts, by an unknown librettist, inspired Bach to produce music of sublime earnestness, great expressive depth and full of rich, immediate imagery.

Whereas these three cantatas were all composed during the winter of 1726-27, Der Friede sei mit dir has a less certain place in the chronology. It is in fact probable that it was assembled from movements from various sources, perhaps by an arranger rather than by Bach himself.

Recorded during live performances in Munich October 1957.

The cantatas in this selection, which have been taken from Ton Koopman’s award-winning series of Bach recordings, feature a single bass voice alongside the choral ensemble. The solo cantata “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen” BWV 56 was first performed on 27 October 1726, the 19th Sunday after Trinity. The author of the text is unknown, but he was apparently inspired by Erdmann Neumeister‘s “Ich will den Kreuzweg gerne gehen” from the latter’s cantata text collection of 1711.

“Ich habe genung” BWV 82 was composed for the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary on 2 February 1727. The author of the text is also onknown. The cantata “Der Friede sei mit dir” BWV 158 survives with designations for two liturgical occasions (Purification/Third Day of Easter) in a manuscript copied by a reliable scribe shortly after Bach‘s death. The origins of the work are therefore uncertain, but

most likely it represents an expansion of a solo cantata originally written (like BWV 82) for the Marian Feast of Purification on 2 February. “Amore traditore” BWV 203, in the typical format (aria-recitative-

aria) of the Italian secular solo cantata, is based on an anonymous text that was also set by the Neapolitan composer Nicola Fago.