‘Music’s
greatest treasure trove’ is an apt description of the Bach cantatas,
since again and again the music-lover will discover riches of
the highest quality and depth. So it proves here in this latest
collection from the distinguished combination of Masaaki Suzuki
and Bach Collegium Japan.
Together they have achieved remarkable things in their Bach
odyssey, and this latest collection must rank among their most
successful to date.
They
perform three cantatas from 1725 in Leipzig. Jesu, nun sei gepreiset (Jesus
now be praised), BWV 41, began the same year as the cantata
performed on 1 January for the Feast of the Circumcision. Bach
employed his favoured method of using an existing chorale melody
- this time by Johannes Herman - as the basis for a complex
chorus as the opening movement. This is also a substantial structure,
and Suzuki articulates its complex textures with remarkable
clarity, aided by the excellent BIS recording, SACD sound at
its best. There is also a more complex relationship of tempi
than Bach generally employs, and this is itself a challenge
to the performers, though here the balancing of faster and slower
identities is handled with masterly transitions and control.
Suzuki’s concern for articulation in his phrasing reaps the
strongest of dividends, and the balancing of the three trumpets
is particularly effective.
The
solo numbers that follow are no less fine, as are the various
instrumental obbligati. The solo voices, save for the counter-tenor
Robin Blaze, join with the twelve voices of the chorus, and
to splendid effect. While Gustav Leonhardt’s celebrated performance
of this cantata (Sony Classical SK68265) remains a poetic and
sensitive interpretation, Suzuki manages to articulate the music’s
nature more keenly still, and with better recorded sound, as
we might expect some forty years on.
Ich
hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn (I
have into God’s heart and soul), BWV
92, was first performed at the end of January 1725. It has a
less grand manner than BWV 41, but no less subtlety in its treatment
of the opening chorus with interpolated chorale melody. The
orchestra features a pair of oboes d’amore with strings and
continuo, a particular and highly effective sound, which is
again well captured by atmospheric recording. Altogether less
dramatic in character, the music makes an effective foil to
the other two featured pieces, the treatments of the chorale
melody if anything more imaginative still. The rhythmic felicities
of the opening chorus are beautifully shaped, although the tenor
and bass arias might have been more strongly characterized in
their phrasing and delivery. No such caveats with Yukari Nonoshita’s
soprano solo, however, replete with beautifully played obbligato
oboe d’amore above pizzicato strings at a perfectly judged tempo.
With
Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir, BWV 130, the splendours
of trumpet sound return, not only at the beginning and ending
of the sequence of movements, but also in the magnificent bass
aria ‘Der alte Drache brennt vor Neid’, with Dominik Wörner
at the peak of his form. More delicate is the tenor aria ‘Laß,
o Furst der Cherubinen’, equally well sung by Jan Kobow yet
quite different in approach. The trumpets are particularly well
recorded and always add that extra dimension Bach surely intended
they should.
Terry Barfoot
Bach Collegium Japan on BIS page
Yukari Nonoshita
(soprano), Robin Blaze (counter-tenor), Jan Kobow (tenor), Dominik
Wörner (bass)
[74:12]
