Bach, J S: Cantata BWV62 'Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland'

The liturgical year with Johann Sebastian Bach: in celebration of the 800th anniversary of 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 Thomanerchor Leipzig (St Thomas’s Boys Choir) 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.

Following the publication of discs with cantatas for the Reformation, Christmas, and Pentecost, the newest release is the fourth recording of the ten-disc series: it presents the cantatas Schwingt freudig euch empor BWV 36 and Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland BWV 61 and 62 which Johann Sebastian Bach composed for performances on the First Sunday of Advent. As cantor at St Thomas Leipzig he followed the town’s adherence to the practice of tempus clausum, the period of silence: no polyphonic music was performed in services between the Second and Fourth Sundays of Advent.

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; a hallmark of the new recording’s unique level of artistry.

Accent continue their successful series. This CD contains cantatas for the first and fourth Sundays of Advent.

Cantatas for the for the First Sunday in Advent (Köln) & Cantatas for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (Lüneburg).

The illustrious, multi-award winning Bach Cantatas series on SDG continues with volume 13 in the series. It features Cantatas for the first and fourth Sunday in Advent and was recorded live in December 2000.

We join John Eliot Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists on their Bach Cantata pilgrimage for a concert of Bach’s Advent cantatas, performed in the largest of the Romanesque churches in Cologne, St. Maria im Kapitol (St. Mary in the Capital).

Besides the festive allure they have in common, all three of Bach’s surviving cantatas for Advent (BWV 61, 62 and 36) display a sense of excitement at the onset of the Advent season. This is a time of anticipation and waiting, and an opportunity for congregations to turn away from all those self-absorbed feelings of guilt, fear, damnation and hellfire that dominated the final Sunday of the Trinity season. This sense of having at last turned a corner is summed up in the radiantly benign accompagnato for soprano and alto ‘Wir ehren diese Herrlickkeit’, the penultimate movement of BWV 62 Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland (Come now, Saviour of the Gentiles). The successive stages of Advent and the different perspectives these give on Jesus’ incarnation are perhaps most clearly marked in Bach’s early version of BWV 61 Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland. The programme ends with BWV 36 Schwingt freudig euch empor (Soar joyfully aloft), a large-scale work divided into two parts, the first of which would have been performed before the sermon, the second afterwards.

The final European leg of the year-long pilgrimage takes us to the atmospheric Michaeliskirche in Lüneburg where we join John Eliot and his musical forces in a concert of three of Bach’s most gripping church cantatas. The programme begins with BWV 70 Wachet! betet! betet! wachet! (Watch! pray! pray! watch!). We then hear one of Bach’s earliest cantatas, BWV 132 Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn! (Prepare the way, prepare the path), an intimate work scored for four voices, oboe, bassoon, strings and continuo consisting of two recitatives, three arias and a final chorale.

The concert ends with BWV 147 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (Heart and Mouth, Deeds and Life), the best known of Bach’s reworkings of an earlier Weimar cantata. The pre-Christmas excitement is captured in the glorious opening chorus by the fanfare-like opening section for orchestra.

2010 marks the 40 anniversary of Collegium Vocale Ghent: founded by Philippe Herreweghe at a time when the Baroque revival was still an affair for specialists, the Belgian choir has been at the very heart of the rediscovery of Bach’s sacred music. Abundantly illustrated and elegantly presented, these nine CD-books offer you the entire collection of Bach/Herreweghe recordings.

“Forty years after its foundation it’s all too easy to take the excellence and consistency of Collegium Vocale Ghent for granted: back in 1970 there wasn’t any such ensemble in mainland Europe. Philippe Herreweghe, a psychiatry student, founded CVG to put his ideas into practice…CVG became part of the first complete Bach cantata project for Telefunken, Herreweghe, at hospital in the day, conducting his choir in the evening sessions… Presentation is exemplary: top quality at mid price, and a birthday gift that really will keep on giving.” Andrew McGregor, BBC Music Magazine, June 2010