Once more Carus has
enriched the Buxtehude discography.
There are three premiere recordings
here – the extensive Wo soll ich
fliehen hin, the shorter but equally
powerful Dein edles Herz, der Liebe
Thron and the compact Erhalt
uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort. If the
performances were ill judged or prosaic
this would be less a matter of pressing
interest but in my experience Carus’s
performances are invariably well prepared
and strongly idiomatic. So it proves
here. That could perhaps be divined
given that the Lautten Compagney is
on hand, directed by Wolfgang Katschnerr.
The choral honours go to the excellent
Capella Angelica.
All forces make themselves
vibrantly heard in Nun danket alle
Gott BuxWV 79, an elegant and fulsome
setting. The cornetti of the Lautten
Compagney are in especially fine form
but note too the expressive depth of
the lines auf dass seine Gnade stets
bei uns bliebe where the full
measure of the setting can best be judged.
The complex dialogue of Christ and a
soul that lies embedded in the text
of Wo soll ich fliehen hin is
equally persuasively realised. Christ’s
warmly consoling bass aria is balanced
by the soul’s So komm ich nun, an
aria of such expressive conciliation
and touching belief that one wonders
that it hasn’t at some time been extracted
for performance on disc. This cantata
exudes a rich vein of intimacy and reflectiveness
and its first appearance on disc is
highly to be welcomed.
Dein edles Herz
is another little known cantata receiving
a premiere recording. It was adapted
from the sixth part of Rhytmica Oratio
written by Arnulf de Louvain, a writer
and text in which Buxtehude showed considerable
interest. Readers may know that he took
the text for his c.1680 Membra Jesu
nostri BuxWV 75, seven compact cantatas
based on the Latin text, which Carus
has also recorded recently. There’s
some incisive and well-moulded string
playing here and a decent enough high
tenor solo in the third verse Durch
deinen Tod. The best known of all
these pieces is Jesu, Meine Freude
which uses Johann Crüger’s popular
1653 melody. This receives a fluid and
good performances though the strings
very occasionally go flat and the soprano
soloist comes through the left channel
in a rather distracting sort of way.
Things are redeemed in Erhalt uns
– bright, solid, and very confident
– and in Eins bitte ich vom Herrn
where the very plangent flautist makes
a really impressive showing. My only
reservations here concern the over-drilled
crispness of the consonants and excessively
rolled "r" in the Coro IV
– Mit der Welt. They sound too
officious for comfort.
The booklet is handsomely
done and the texts are in German and
English. This Buxtehude series from
Carus is gathering momentum and is proving
highly impressive.
Jonathan Woolf
for details
