JSB sacred cantatas: which are your favourites, and why?

[ardcarp]

Oh dear Pulcs you've really got me going. Played my old Gonnenwein version of Gottes Zeit...but to my delight it's on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txb5nkZGxD8

Who are these altruistic people who take the trouble to load these things up?
It's not very HIPP, but it uses real viols and blockfloter [whatever the plural is] and it's VERY, VERY beautiful.
It is a funeral cantata, and one can't help feeling these historic 'slow' performances somehow hit the mark.

[jayne lee wilson]

Utterly unable to work through anything remotely approaching an intégrale, I stuck loyally to Fritz Werner's Pforzeim CO collection on Erato for many years (60-odd works, more than enough for me...), with some wonderful soloists like Maurice André, Pierre Pierlot, Barry McDaniel, Agnes Giebel, Emiko Liyama (wonderful on 51, with André soaring away around her), and this introduced me to Ein Feste Burg, Ich Habe Genug, Herz und Mund, 21, 147 etc etc... so many others.

Hearing Herreweghe's latest releases earlier this year, I was especially drawn to Christ lag in todesbunden (4), Gott der herr (79), Mache Dich (115)....so I sought out his back-cat, and bought this 2nd hand....

https://www.amazon.fr/Plus-Belles-Cantates-anglais/dp/B000034D3T/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=

With separate discs for alto- and bass-solo works etc., Lovely lazy cantata-lover's way of getting some of the loveliest ... I like having them drifting through the house, or in the bedroom late on....Bach Cantatas have become surprisingly important to me recently.... (and I saved a new-release Weihnachtsoratorium on Qobuz for later....)

(Now to listen to what should be a riotous Any Questions....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... the other question, of course, is which box / set of Cantatas one wd choose - Kuijken, Herreweghe, Leonhardt/Harnoncourt, Suzuki, Gardiner, Leusink, Koopman...

Kuijken isn't complete, is it? I focussed on Leonhardt/Harnoncourt and Leusink - not least because they were the cheapest to acquire piecemeal, but also because they use boys' voices in the choruses (even if too many of 'em) - and even in some of the L/H solos. The Leusink set has its faults (some of the men soloists, and a tendency to stick everything into the continuo section) but it has a verve and charm that I much prefer to many of the adult, professional, star-lined recordings.

But still waiting for the OYpP, young singers (including boys) complete set. I'll stick with my patchwork complete edition until that appears.

[Bryn]

"OYpP". Oklahoma Young pastor Partnership?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"OYpP". Oklahoma Young pastor Partnership?

Don't be silly.

"One Yodel per Part", of course.

[Bryn]

Don't be silly.

"One Yodel per Part", of course.

Not necessarily the best delivery.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Vox Humana]

But there isn't a single one that doesn't contain something valuable really.

This ^.

Talking of non-HIP performances, I have always loved this. Surprisingly for Thurston Dart it's totally romantic, lush and super-indulgent (complete with harp continuo) and, even for me, a bit slow, but the benefit of this is that you can really savour the dissonances and other subtleties in the accompaniment - and, oh those irregular interrupted cadences between 5:30 and 6:30! It makes almost all modern interpretations sound superficial and sometimes even insensitive in comparison.

[ardcarp]

Agreed, Vox, it has great beauty. I'm sure there's a half way house somewhere between this and today's performances which seem almost double the speed.
Thurston Dart was a great scholar, but he lived in an era when, for instance, The St Matthew Passion took one-third longer to perform than nowadays!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I didn't like the Dart performance at all - a matter of preference/personality, of course, but for me those "savoured dissonances" give a description of a generalised sense of beauty, rather than the detached empathy that I prefer in the work (because I find this much more affecting). Bachmaninoff just doesn't sound - I was going to say "sincere", but that's the wrong word; it's very obviously dripping with sincerity - "right" for this Music to me (or what I need from it).

[Dave2002]

Don't be silly.

"One Yodel per Part", of course.

Maybe better than Yokels - though that could set a new trend.

[vinteuil]

I didn't like the Dart performance at all - a matter of preference/personality, of course, but for me those "savoured dissonances" give a description of a generalised sense of beauty, rather than the detached empathy that I prefer in the work (because I find this much more affecting). Bachmaninoff just doesn't sound - I was going to say "sincere", but that's the wrong word; it's very obviously dripping with sincerity - "right" for this Music to me (or what I need from it).

... ferney - did you mean ' but not "right" for this music to me... "

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[ardcarp]

...I think the sense was, "Bachmaninov just doesn't sound "right" for this Music...."

[Vox Humana]

I'm sure there's a half way house somewhere between this and today's performances which seem almost double the speed.

Yes, I'm sure there is. Some time ago I went through every performance of this on YouTube. There was one there that I felt got it very nearly right, although I can't remember now which/who it was. Nearly all of them were far too fast for me and a couple of them were quite clod-hoppingly crude. I appreciate that it's a matter of taste, but I just find it difficult to believe that Bach would have produced all the tellingly wonderful harmonic and contrapuntal effects he did if he expected them to be thrown away in a helter-skelter of speed. Light and airy is all the rage today, but nothing in my reading of Bach's character leads me to believe that he was a light, airy and superficial man. The thing I still value most about the old Harnoncourt/Leonhardt series of cantatas is that the speeds are generally about right for my taste - fluent enough to hold one's interest, but not at the expense of profundity.

[vinteuil]

...I think the sense was, "Bachmaninov just doesn't sound "right" for this Music...."

... o yes. Sorry, ferney, my too-cursory read of your carefully-constructed sentence.



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