BaL 11.06.16 - JS Bach: Cantata BWV198 'Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl'

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Who'd have thought it? A 50-year old winner.

[HighlandDougie]

An excellent BaL for someone like me who respects but doesn't much warm to JSB. I don't think I've ever heard the work before. Anyway, J F-A had me immediately engaged with what was being played/said. More of him please. And I've just ordered the winner so it had its desired effect.

[jonfan]

A very thoughtful BAL in full sympathy with the subject. I can't remember when a survey of a Bach Cantata was last included in the series. I appreciated the analysis of all the competing recordings but I'm staying with Suzuki whose approach I've come to know and love over the years.

[pastoralguy]

An excellent BaL for someone like me who respects but doesn't much warm to JSB. I don't think I've ever heard the work before. Anyway, J F-A had me immediately engaged with what was being played/said. More of him please. And I've just ordered the winner so it had its desired effect.

My thoughts exactly.

[ardcarp]

I agree he backed up what he said by what was played...with one glaring exception. He did not say that many examples were just TOO FAST to express the various emotions of grief, remembrance, 'readiness for death' which he pointed up in his review. Maybe he was afraid of seeming un-cool? Jurgens is no slouch where speed is concerned, but his tempi are broad enough to allow appropriate phrasing and expressiveness, and I was pleased that was his choice.

[PS Have we got more than one thread about this?}

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

He did not say that many examples were just TOO FAST to express the various emotions of grief, remembrance, 'readiness for death' which he pointed up in his review.

Perhaps because he didn't think they were?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I can't remember when a survey of a Bach Cantata was last included in the series.

December 2013

[ardcarp]

Perhaps because he didn't think they [the tempi] were?

I guess he did...given that all his reasons for choosing the Jurgens version related to the way it effectively expressed the gamut of emotions which the text elicited. You just can't do that when speed makes everything sound superficial.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I guess he did...given that all his reasons for choosing the Jurgens version related to the way it effectively expressed the gamut of emotions which the text elicited. You just can't do that when speed makes everything sound superficial.

But your suggestion about his reasons for not saying this explicitly cannot be right: "afraid of seeming un-cool" - hardly; if that were at all a consideration, he wouldn't've chosen Jurgens at all. Nor did his "very close second choice" indicate that he shared your opinion that "speed makes everything sound superficial".

I'm going for Parrott, anyway: that was the one that struck me as best realizing Bach's marvellous score.

[Dave2002]

An excellent BaL for someone like me who respects but doesn't much warm to JSB. I don't think I've ever heard the work before. Anyway, J F-A had me immediately engaged with what was being played/said. More of him please. And I've just ordered the winner so it had its desired effect.

I ordered from am marketplace - seemed very engaging from the programme. I may have it already in a box set, but this did seem to be in a different class.

[Nick Armstrong]

Top flight BAL. Really well and interestingly expressed, JF-A's prose a thought-provoking pleasure it itself - I loved phrases like "aerated and galant accentuations" and "modern ears seasoned in the emollient gestures of period performance"

And what a wonderful piece - I'd heard it before but forgotten it... sharing qualities that made me choose the opening of Cantata BWV 8 ("Liebster Gott...") for my dad's funeral in November, e.g. the astonishing ability to convey funeral emotion through a dance movement like a gigue, and an orchestral palette featuring (as the reviewer put it) "those symbolic instruments of grief, soft flutes and oboes d'amore".

One of those BALs though where I shall be going for the runner-up: right from the start (and confirmed by further extracts) I was hooked by the Pierlot performance above all (I'm glad that unlike a few recently, they remembered to tell us what the introductory extract was). Also I liked the sound of the Leonhardt (great treble soloist too). I've just downloaded both of those.

But fascinating to hear the others too (amazing how the Robert Craft performance almost sounded like Stravinsky).

All very rewarding - Radio 3 at its best.

[gurnemanz]

I also greatly enjoyed the review. I have two versions, both on complete sets, and probably won't get another. Leusink was never going to get a library recommendation but I like his versions ("slapdash" was a bit harsh, I thought). It is to some extent his breakneck recording schedule and non-virtuoso approach which gives the recordings a kind of honesty and directness, and an affinity to the kind of pressure under which Back himself was working. I also like Leonhardt with boy sop and René Jacobs on counter-tenor. If I did get another it would probably be Pierlot.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Leusink was never going to get a library recommendation but I like his versions ("slapdash" was a bit harsh, I thought). It is to some extent his breakneck recording schedule and non-virtuoso approach which gives the recordings a kind of honesty and directness, and an affinity to the kind of pressure under which Back himself was working.

[Pulcinella]

Also I liked the sound of the Leonhardt (great treble soloist too).

Changed mistaken Harnoncourt to Leonhardt in my previous post (#8); might be mistaken about my original thoughts of the treble soloist too, as I didn't cringe/fear for the lad as much listening to the extract yesterday as I had a few days ago.

But fascinating to hear the others too (amazing how the Robert Craft performance almost sounded like Stravinsky).

Now you mention it, yes.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Now you mention it, yes.

- specifically the recordings of late Stravinsky works using the same sessions chamber choirs and the Gregg Smith singers! (Used in Craft's pioneering Webern recordings, too - and often sounding as if they'd just come from a soundtrack recording at the Disney studios.)

I see that the Bach was also once released as a coupling to Craft's recording of the Monteverdi "Vespers" - anyone ever heard this?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bach-Cantatas-Nos-Monteverdi-Vespers/dp/B000024QV0