Pachelbel: Christ lag in Todesbanden

In their vivid new recording, The Bach Players introduce the music of Johann Pachelbel, a friend of the Bach family and 30 years older than Johann Sebastian. Each disc of this double CD presents cantatas with texts set by both Pachelbel and Bach: ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’ and ‘Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan’. In the first case the older composer’s influence on Bach’s writing is very clear; in the second, we hear the mature Bach. A generous helping of Pachelbel’s music is given: the beautiful Canon and two of his sacred concertos. Bach is represented also by his cantata for solo alto, ‘Widerstehe doch der Sünde’, and the lesser known canons from the Goldberg Variations in an arrangement by the group’s keyboard player, Silas Wollston.

A 28-page booklet includes an essay on this music by the composer Hugh Wood and a note by Silas Wollston on his arrangement of the Goldberg canons. Texts of all the vocal pieces are given in German with English translations. There are photos of the recording session. The CDs and booklet are held in a packet made of card and without plastic.

2 discs for the price of 1

Hyperion’s Bach piano transcription series, which has done so much to illustrate the unique effect of Bach on the nineteenth-century mind, has reached volume 7 with the complete transcriptions by Max Reger.

Reger was described by his contemporaries as ‘the modern-day Bach’, partly because of his frequent use of fugue and other characteristic forms. His skills as a pianist were matched by his abilities as an organist—a situation that influenced his a profound understanding of Bach’s counterpoint. Therefore it is fascinating to see the composer’s direct response to his predecessor.

In the young German virtuoso Markus Becker we have the ideal performer: he has already recorded the complete original piano works of Reger. As Francis Pott writes in his comprehensive booklet notes: ‘In adopting a balance of linear and polyphonic clarity with the full expressive resources of the piano and of virtuoso technique, Markus Becker respects the historic significance both of Bach’s original inspirations and of Reger’s transcriptions as documents of their own time’.

The tricentenary of Johann Pachelbel's death went almost unnoticed in 2006.The present recording of Cantatas thus fills an important gap in the discography related to the history of religious music in Germany in the Baroque period. One happily discovers a composer immersed in the polyphonic practice of central Germany, close to the ancestors of J.S. Bach and well aware of new influences from Italy.These compositions are organically linked to the melodies of Luther's chorales and by their shape and size constitute an obvious link between the XVIIth century and the first cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach.