Category: Recording

James Gilchrist Evangelista, Stephan Loges Jesus, Hannah Morrison, Zoë Brookshaw, Charlotte Ashley, Reginald Mobley, Eleanor Minney, Hugo Hymas, Ashley Riches, Alex Ashworth, Jonathan Sells SSSASTBBB, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Trinity Boys Choir, Sir John Eliot Gardiner
161:04 (2 CDs in a hard-covered booklet)
SDG725

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his recording was made at a live performance in the Duomo at Pisa last September, at which I happened to be present, and has been splendidly edited. Gardiner was saying to his musicians that this was going to be his last ever St Matthew, and certainly this was the last performance of a whole series that they had given over the previous months. In some ways this is vintage Gardiner; there are two choirs of 6.3.3.3 – so 30 singers plus the cantus firmus from the Trinity Boys Choir and bands with 3.3.2.2.1 strings – but what makes it such a good performance is that all the singers sang off copy, so the absolute unanimity of the words projected into the space is telling, as was the hieratic way that singers from the different cori moved into position to sing with the different instrumental ensembles.

Apart from the peerless James Gilchrist and the commanding Stephan Loges, all other solo roles were sung by members of the choir, revealing what a talented group of singers Gardiner commands. Among the six sopranos, Hannah Morrison is outstanding for her liquid, floating tone, and Eleanor Minney sings one of the best performances of Erbarme dich  I have heard. The clear-voiced tenor of Hugo Hymas seems effortless in the high tessitura of his arias, and Gardiner can choose a more bass bass (Alex Ashworth) for Gebt mir  while giving Gerne will ich mich  and Komm, süßes Kreuz  to the lighter-voiced Ashley Riches, reserving the dark-toned Jonathan Sells for Judas and Am Abend  and Mache dich. Singers like this are much better than the old ‘soloists’ at getting inside the music, and understanding the instruments with which they are singing, and Gardiner at least has this right in not dividing his ‘soloists’ from his choir: in Bach, the soloists are the choir, boosted by groups of ripienists, and this unanimity of choral and solo sound make this Matthew especially well integrated.

In a performance like this, in a substantial space, it would be churlish to criticise such a coherent presentation for what it doesn’t claim to be, but I missed hearing the bass voice in coro I who has sung the part of Jesus also singing Komm, süßes Kreuz, and wonder about the constant criss-crossing of singers to sing with the other band that disregards Bach’s division between the cori.

In his notes – substantially drawn from his 2013 book, Music in the Castle of Heaven  – Gardiner writes interestingly on Bach’s purpose, drawing on the deeply felt Lutheranism he brought to his writing, and how he sought to convey the drama by gathering his hearers into the sound-world of the liturgical event rather than performing at them, as if in an opera house. In modern performances with large forces, where the audience do not have the chorale melodies in their bones, it is difficult to recapture the electric atmosphere of such a liturgical event. But if you want a large-scale performance that avoids the monumental ‘oratorio-style’ of the past while giving due weight to the music, this would be a good choice.

In over-all terms, this is the best of Gardiner’s Matthew Passions. The balance between voices and instruments, not always perfect in that big acoustic in the flesh, has been beautifully captured by the recording editor. The tempi are ideal, with no racing through ‘just because we can’. This is a strong and mature performance, and – should it indeed be the last – will be a fine testimony to Gardiner’s style and intentions in the Matthew Passion.

David Stancliffe

Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier
84:55
Alpha Classics Alpha 258
BWV 12, 106, 131, 150

[dropcap[]I[/dropcap] had known the Belgium-based group Vox Luminis as a very carefully balanced small choral group who specialised primarily in the repertoire of the seventeenth century. And now, following CDs of Schütz and Scheidt, the older Bachs, Fux, Kerll and Scarlatti, they are tackling Bach Cantatas. This CD is of four early cantatas with a gradated increase in scoring from the two recorders and viola da gambas of BWV 106, with four single voices and organ, through to the more recognisably ‘Italian’ style of BWV 12, with its distinct choruses, recitatives and arias that uses a full complement of strings with two viola parts, and has not only an oboe and bassoon, but a trumpet as well. With a more substantial score goes an increase in the number of singers from four in 106 to eight in parts of 150, and divided into solo and tutti very sensitively and effectively in 131 and using that full complement again in the distinct opening chorus and concluding chorale of 12.

With the increase in vocal scoring goes a fuller registration on the quite substantial organ, built for the church in Bornem in Belgium (where the recording took place in 2013) by Dominique Thomas after the style of Gottfried Silbermann. The organ continuo is based on a Principal chorus rather than a stopped flute, and this gives a clarity and firmness to the bass line. In 106 no 8’ string bass is employed, let alone a 16’. If a 16’ was used by Bach in the pre-Leipzig cantatas, I suspect it was most likely supplied by the organ, as here – rather sparingly but effectively – in the closing bars of 131, for example. The sound of the final chorale in 12, Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, where the descant line is entrusted to the slide trumpet and the first violin and a full chorus to mixture with a 16’ pedal are employed on the organ provides a thrilling climax to the recording. This organ is a fine instrument by an excellent builder (I have played a number of his instruments and rate him highly) and plays at 440 rather than the 460+ of the Chorton in Weimar, so there are some complexities in matching wind instruments to the pitch of the organ and strings. For example, the recorders of 106 must be playing in F on A=392hz instruments, and the oboe and bassoon in 131 must play in A at 392 as well. But how does the bassoon play so beautifully in 150? Bach wrote the fagotto part in D, but the strings play in B at 440; does the bassoonist play a 415 French-style instrument in C – it certainly sounds a fine bottom B! And what do they do in 12? There is no information on the instruments and pitches other than the (full) documentation of the organ, and liner-notes really should give us these basic and important – to practitioners – details. There are full texts and French and English translations, and the essay by Gilles Cantagrel, like for the A Nocte Temporis  CD reviewed in December, is engaging for its insights on the interplay between theology, musicology and performance practice.

But it is the firm, robust and yet flexible sound of the singers, especially when singing together, that characterises these performances. For once, singers are approaching Bach cantatas with a sense of understanding where they have come from, what is the hinterland behind the cantatas and the performance style required. Often we hear Bach cantatas performed by singers who have reached back behind their 21st-century formation as singers and have more or less learned to discard some of their singing teachers’ conception of what solo singers ought to sound like. When this happens, the results are more or less successful as singers try to make a living and adapt to singing in a historically informed way as well as doing what most conductors still expect of a ‘soloist’. I valued the fine recordings of these early cantatas by the Purcell Quartet with Emma Kirkby, Michael Chance, Charles Daniels and Peter Harvey greatly when they came out in the early 2000s, but that was still a coro made up of four distinct ‘solo’ voices, that has remained the one-to-a-part standard in this country.

But Vox Luminis have approached these early Bach cantatas from the style of ensemble singing they have created for Bach’s 17th-century predecessors. This means that the ensemble sound, like that of the organ, is robust, but open voiced rather than ‘produced’. Not everyone will like it, but (to me) it offers an unrivalled blend and clarity. You can get a glimpse of how it is achieved on the useful Youtube video that Lionel Meunier has produced to accompany this venture.

This style of intimate attention to each others voice production as well as to the phrasing and diction is well illustrated, and makes for a style of music-making that has more in common with a viol consort playing to each other.

Some of the individual singers offer moments of great insight too: Vox Luminis have drawn in Reinoud van Mechelen, the singer/director of A Nocte Temporis  (CD Alpha 252, reviewed in December) to sing with them in 131 and 12, and that sets a new standard for Vox Luminis’ solo contributions, which are always musical, clear as a bell and beautifully phrased. I particularly like the alto as well, Daniel Elgersma, who has the particularly strong lower notes of a true haute-contre, which you rarely get with an English cathedral-style male alto. For me, as so often the only vocal query I have is with the soprano line. Excellent though the singers of Vox Luminis are, they do not have quite the edge of boy trebles like Leopold Lampelsdorfer singing in Eichorn’s Weihnachtsoratorium  I – III (VKJK 1238) or Jonty Ward in Higginbottom’s Mozart Requiem (NCR 1383), for example.

You can tell that in spite of the lack of some basic information in the liner notes, I rate the approach of Vox Luminis both vocally and instrumentally highly. This is great music-making, and the ease with which the sensible tempi changes are managed without any overt conducting as well as the cohesion and coherence of the style that make the texts the focus of the performances sets a new benchmark in the way we are learning to approach Bach Cantatas.

David Stancliffe