Bach, J S: Cantata BWV7 'Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam'

The first issue in the long-awaited series of live recordings, made on the artists’ Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000. The cantatas were performed on the feast days for which they were written and this series will be the first to reflect those couplings. The 2CD set is sumptuously packaged in a beautiful case-bound book, with stunning cover photos by Steve McCurry, detailed programme notes adapted from John Eliot Gardiner’s Pilgrimage Journal, and full sung texts and translations.

The Festival Montréal Baroque takes place every year in June, in the neighborhood of Old Montreal. The founder and director of the festival, gambist Susie Napper, infuses this event with a festive air, concocting unusual and original programs. As an associate of the festival, ATMA co-produces certain concerts, which are then recorded. This sample disc, signaling the approach of Montréal Baroque 2005, presents extracts from recordings made at previous festivals, some of which have not yet been released.

This 9-CD boxed set of first releases from the RIAS archives presents the first ever attempt at a recording of the complete Bach cantatas.

For everyone who is interested in the history of Bach interpretation and in the development of Germany’s post-1945 cultural rebuilding, these recordings represent a significant enrichment. From 1946, Karl Ristenpart established choral and orchestral ensembles at the RIAS Berlin, directing the RIAS Kammerchor and the RIAS Kammerorchester. With these ensembles, and emerging young singers (including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Helmut Krebs and Agnes Giebel), Karl Ristenpart and Elsa Schiller, then head of music at the RIAS, embarked in 1947 upon a recording series of the complete Bach cantatas. However, it proved impossible to realise the project in its entirety. The 29 cantatas which survive in the RIAS archives document a Bach ideal which is pioneering even by today’s standards: thanks to small-scale forces the musical structures are distinct and transparent, and the singers link their articulation to that of the instrumentalists.This interpretation, which is free of any monumentalism, paved the way, aesthetically, for historically informed performance practice.

Upon popular demand available again: Bach’s complete Sacred Cantatas, newly compiled, on 50 CDs, an unbelievable bargain.

These recordings, produced for the Bach‐year 2000, feature a superb boys choir, the Holland Boys Choir, a tradition going back to the time of the composer. The Netherlands Bach Collegium consists of Dutch early music specialists playing period instruments. Conductor Pieter Jan Leusink puts his entire soul in these recordings of what one might call “the greatest and most humanly moving corpus of sacred music ever written”.

Reviewers around the world praised the set for its “characteristic performances, marked by a great sense of authencity, especially from the use of boy sopranos”. It sounds very much like it might have sounded in Bach’s time (Gramophone).

Written to exalt the glory of God and to facilitate Lutheran worship, Johann Sebastian Bach’s sacred cantatas stand among the highest achievements of Western musical art. This acclaimed recording sees the works performed in their entirety by a stellar line‐up of musicians that includes the renowned Holland Boys’ Choir and period instrument ensemble Netherlands Bach Collegium. The cantatas are directed by Pieter van Leusink, one of Holland’s leading Bach experts. From the plaintive opening of Weinen, Kleinen, Sorgen, Sagen (‘Weeping, lamenting, worrying, fearing’) BWV12 to the triumphant D major chorus in Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg BWV149, the works traverse a wide range of themes and moods, having been written for a variety of occasions throughout the liturgical year.