Bach, J S: Cantata BWV147 'Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben': Jesu, bleibet meine Freude (Jesu, joy of man's desiring) - download (MP3 & FLAC)

Arthur Fiedler took great pride in bringing classical music to the world at large. While Leonard Bernstein was busy with his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Fiedler and his Boston Pops Orchestra (most of the members drawn from the Boston Symphony) gave concerts of popular classics that became a fixture on America’s musical calendar. They made several recordings for Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon and the ever-popular Christmas disc is here reissued with built-in bonus tracks by Bach, Humperdinck and Tchaikovsky, in a sleigh ride, taking the listener from a delightful pot-pourri of carols (‘A Christmas Festival’) arranged by Leroy Anderson to Baroque hits in lush orchestrations to high-energy American Christmas songs – all arranged sumptuously for orchestra.

Karl Münchinger recorded all the major orchestral and choral pieces by Bach for Decca, and over a period of some 30 years (from the Mono to the Digital eras), five of the Cantatas. All boast remarkable soloists from their eras. Suzanne Danco sings the two solo cantatas, BWV 51 and 202, recorded in 1953 and released on CD for the first time. Elly Ameling and Helen Watts are soloists in the early cantata, BWV 10. And the digital recordings of Ein feste Burg and Wachet auf feature Julia Hamari and Tom Krause. The collection is rounded off with two of the most popular orchestral arrangements from the Bach cantata repertoire – Jesu, joy of man’s desiring and Sheep may safely graze.

From the nineteenth century transcriptions by Francisco Tárrega to those by John Duarte and Rick Foster, the tradition of performing J.S. Bach’s music on the guitar has fashioned works of great beauty and transformative power. The two Chorale Preludes include the use of plucked strings, which impart serenity and clarity. The Cello Suite is especially well suited to the guitar, the aria-like beauty of its Sarabande being the height of elegance and nobility, whilst the Violin Partita No. 2, with its monumental Chaconne, translates to the guitar with hypnotic force. Graham Anthony Devine is one of the world’s foremost guitarists whose British Guitar Music (8557040) was lauded as ‘a winner in all respects… beyond reproach’. (MusicWeb International)

The true identity of the organ featured here was not discovered until 2007. It was originally built in 1913/14 for the “Britannic” ocean liner, sister of the “Titanic”. Because the vessel was used as a hospital ship during World War I, it was probably never installed on the ship’s passenger deck. It has been renovated and called the “Britannic Organ” and is in outstanding condition. Here we have performances by Rumsey, as well as Welte rolls and some of the oldest recordings of historic organists.

Nuit Sacrée documents a televised concert that was broadcast on Christmas Day 2009 on France 2, one of the main French TV Channels, from St Thomas’s Church in Strasbourg. It features some of the finest sacred pieces linked to the festive season, and an impressive array of some of the best musicians of our time. Perhaps the major attraction is the multi-award winning chamber choir Accentus under its acclaimed conductor Laurence Equilbey. They are joined by the equally celebrated baroque specialist ensemble Concerto Köln and several outstanding vocal and instrumental soloists, among them soprano Sandrine Piau, contralto Nathalie Stutzmann, bass-baritone Johannes Weisser and cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton.

Founded by its current director Laurence Equilbey, Accentus is a professional chamber choir which appears in the leading concert halls and international festivals. The group collaborates regularly with prestigious conductors and orchestras (Pierre Boulez, Christoph Eschenbach, Orchestre de Paris, Ensemble intercontemporain, Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen Haute Normandie, Concerto Köln, Akademie für Alte Musik). The group’s recordings have received numerous prizes from the musical press, notably ‘Transcription”, Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, Fauré’s Requiem with members of the Orchestre National de France, and ‘Strauss a cappella’ with the Latvian Radio Choir. Accentus records exclusively for Naïve.

Includes the CD début of Stokowski’s only recording of the Second Orchestral Suite, which has been unavailable for the past half-century.

Walter Gieseking’s interpretations of Bach in the early years of his career gained him laurels for “his control over shades of tone, especially over infinite gradations in the range between piano and pianissimo, the clear definition of his agile finger-work, and the firm outlines of his rhythm and phrasing… This style, so lucid and so rhythmical, is the perfect vehicle for Bach’s keyboard music”.

Gieseking’s 1931 account of Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’ Sonata also won him contemporary critical accolades: “Perfect playing matched with perfect recording. I know of no better interpretation of this sonata… a splendid achievement, one of the high water marks of piano recording”.

Leopold Stokowski arranged nearly 40 works from Bach’s catalogue for the modern symphony orchestra, and José Serebrier’s second volume of Bach-Stokowski Transcriptions is as colourful and wide-ranging as the first (8557883).

In response to popular and critical demand the present selection begins with the most famous Bach orchestration of all, the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D minor. This reached its widest public in Walt Disney’s Fantasia and here introduces a programme of sumptuous arrangements, including other music from the pre- and post- baroque periods.