Bach, J S: St Matthew Passion, BWV244: Erbarme dich

After attracting attention at the French "Victoires de la Musique Classique" Awards in 2012, the contralto and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann is back with her Orfeo 55 ensemble.

For her new album, Nathalie Stutzmann has imagined an "ideal" cantata based on the most beautiful music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach: her imaginary cantata includes vocal arias of course, but also instrumental pieces and even chorales.

From Bach's immense, magnificent repertoire, Nathalie Stutzmann wanted to "pick a bouquet of its most beautiful flowers."

Arias of gallantry or tenderness, anger, love, fear or despair... every register of expression comes together in Nathalie Stutzmann's "Cantate imaginaire", giving birth to an entirely work with an album constructed in a single, continuous breath.

The baroque woman was confined to a strictly domestic role. She was either saintly (mother of Christ and the subject of religious allegory as in Handel’s Trionfo del tempo e del disinganno), a diva, a queen (Poppea, Cleopatra) or the inevitable victim in classical tragedies like Semiramis, Berenice, Rodelinda and Agrippina.

'Ladies sing Baroque' is shaped as a nod to those ladies who have enchanted jazz, but composed of music from two centuries earlier: hymns to emotion, the tunes that disturb for eternity! Monteverdi's invention of opera, Vivaldi's music for the Pieta, Pergolesi and Bach bring the drama and emotion found in temples and churches. Highlights include the final duet from 'L'Incorronazione di Poppea' and Bach's sublime 'Erbarme dich' whilst two Canadians with strong characters, Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Karina Gauvin, successfully evoke the legendary association of Marilyn Horne and Montserrat Caballé.

To the vocal lines of arias and duets, Bach composed gorgeous violin obbligati. In this novel album, Hilary Hahn records these obbligati exclusively – an act of devotion no other virtuoso violinist has ever committed to disc

Sharing this album with Hahn are soprano Christine Schäfer and baritone Matthias Goerne, both also renowned Bach exponents

Numbers from such masterpieces as the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor are rendered with an unearthly beauty and a reverence that add to this recording’s historical significance

In truth, this album features not two but three singers – Hahn elicits from her Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume tone as sung by a golden voice

Born to sing J. S. Bach, Anne Sofie von Otter brings elegant style, richness of voice, and career-long commitment to Baroque music to this glorious recording of alto and soprano arias she herself selected. Featuring beloved staples like the moving “Erbarme Dich” from the St. Matthew Passion and the “Agnus Dei” from the B minor Mass, this follow-up to her successful release of Music for a While includes lesser-known repertoire to entice the most jaded lover of voice, Baroque or Bach. Lars Ulrik Mortensen leads Concerto Copenhagen, the acclaimed Scandinavian Baroque ensemble, in instrumentations of fascinating variety unusual in Bach solo vocal albums

Moving from the harpsichord to the clavichord or the organ was probably easy enough for Johann Sebastian Bach. The source of the sound didn’t matter, because for the master of Leipzig, what counted were thought and intellect: the form, tonality and melodic contours ere more important than the instrument itself. And indeed, through this work of musical thought, Bach used different keyboards, prefiguring the instruments to come: the piano as a synthesis of the harpsichord, the organ and the clavichord.

Bach was aware of exchanges between the different European schools, which allowed musicians to copy, transcribe and adapt the work of contemporaries. Bach did this with his own scores, as well as those of his colleagues. Over the centuries, Busoni, Siloti, Kempff and Kurtàg amongst other have transformed the magic of the organ, orchestra and choruses of the cantatas to the piano.

And now, Ensemble Contraste presents its own vision of the Cantor: a school of freedom that never betrays his conception and allows the beauty, rigorous construction and triumphant polyphonies to shine through.

"La Dolce Volta, a new French classical music label whose outstanding production values include big, bold sound and cerebral liner notes laid out in cerebral, hip typography" Strings