Tag: Choral music

Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier
70:27
Ricercar RIC418

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A key figure in the mid-17th-century German world is Andreas Hammerschmidt (1611/2-1675) who was fluent in the emerging cantata style and equally at home in monody or the madrigalesque style of Italy. His sacred works were published over 15 volumes printed between 1639 and 1671 and combine polychoral motets with solo and dialogue pieces, many using thematic material derived from chorales. In some ways overshadowed by his better-known contemporary Schütz, he was among the creators of the sound world of Lutheran church music in which the contributors to the Altbachisches Archiv and ultimately Johann Sebastian Bach himself were formed. A lot of attention has been paid to Schütz and Schein, and to Buxtehude in the north, while Hammerschmidt is unjustly – on the basis of this fine recording – neglected.

Partly to remedy this, Vox Luminis – here using 13 singers – recorded this selection of his works in 2019, using the substantial organ by Dominique Thomas of 2002 in the north transept of the church of Notre-Dame at Gedinne in Belgium, where in 2017 they had recorded motets by Schein and Ahle for inclusion in an interesting CD devised by the remarkable Breton bassoonist, Jérémie Papasergio. The Hammerschmidt programme is structured around texts for Passiontide and Easter, beginning with the elegiac motet Ach Jesus stirbt, which is the title given to the whole CD. They work with the string group CLEMATIS, (2 violins, 2 violas and violone) and brass (2 trumpets, 3 trombones and bassoon), although the majority of pieces have just basso continuo with the voices.

Vox Luminis are at the heart of their comfort zone with this colourful and often surprisingly adventurous music. The balance, clarity and diction for which the group is justly celebrated are all in evidence in these subtle and well-paced performances. This is an important introduction to Hammerschmidt’s unique voice, but it is also a quite excellent performance of gripping music.

I like it a lot, and it offers far more than just filling another gap in the complex jigsaw of 17th-century Germany, where cross currents between national styles, composers’ opportunities to travel and the myriad small courts with their musical establishments was all part of creating an emerging late Baroque synthesis. Each performance is beautiful and moving in itself, but the cumulative effect is distinctive and compelling.

Some motets are in more in the old cori spezzati style; others employ echo effects, like Siehe, wie fein und lieblich ists in three choirs. In a newer and more obviously modern style, Ach Gott, warum hast du mein vergessen has four character voices, beginning with Ps 22.1 and ending with Alleluias, so taking us from the cross to the empty tomb. Its companion piece is Wer wälzet uns der Stein, where a pair of sopranos ask the question ‘Who will roll away the stone?’ A pair of violins dialogue with them, while violas and violone shadow the lower voices and a bright organ sound adds to the outburst of Easter joy. Restrained and sung by just four voices with continuo is O barmherziger Vater, while Christ lag in Todesbanden makes polyphony out of the chorale, setting it for two trebles and a tenor with three trombones and continuo. Easter is celebrated in a less antique Lutheran style in Triumph, Triumph, Victoria, which has upper voices in pairs – two sopranos, two tenors and then a different pair of sopranos – for the verses with two trumpets and three trombones with the tutti. For Ascension Day we have a motet based on upward scale passages that cumulates in tuttis capped by three trumpets. Very different is Vater unser, with four favoriti, a five-part string group and a capella of five voices joining for the tutti, and the poignant words Ist nicht Ephraim mein theurer Sohn, set memorably by Schütz, receives a haunting performance with just five voices.

As so often with Vox Luminis, the performances seem just right: no individualistic voices unbalance the perfect restraint, yet the outbursts of Easter joy are life enhancing. The choice of music not only illustrates the multiple styles to be found in Hammerschmidt, but shows how rich was the melting pot of middle Europe in these mid-17th-century years. This is an important CD, and no one should be without it.

David Stancliffe

Núria Rial, Wiebke Lehnkuhl, Benedikt Kristjánsson, Matthias Winckhler, Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann
65:54
Carus 83.522

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These two substantial cantatas are as good an introduction to Bach cantatas as you are likely to get, and they are presented in this CD published by Carus Verlag as an up-to-the-moment take on how to do the cantatas.

The pair is well-chosen: both are the results of the routine into which Bach’s new appointment at Leipzig threw him, and show the composer adapting compositions from the Weimar period to novel contexts. Both are substantial works in two parts. Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21) was probably originally composed as a test piece for a post in Halle in 1713, from which Bach later withdrew. He used it for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity in 1714, again for a trial in Hamburg in 1720 in D minor, presumably in Cammerton, and it was included in the first cantata cycle of 1723 on June 13th, reworked for C in – presumably – Cammerton. The original key in Weimar seems to have been C at Chorton, and by 1723 in Leipzig it was back in C, but at Cammerton, with four colla parte trombones in movement ix. It has everything: the division of the singers into soli and tutti, an opening sinfonia with a solo oboe, a soprano/bass duet between the soul and the vox Christi, illustrative writing, a recitative accompanied by two oboes da caccia, and a blazing finale with a choir of trumpets – a veritable showcase of styles and techniques.

Only a few weeks later Leipzig heard BWV 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, which was written originally for the fourth Sunday of Advent 1716 in Weimar, of which nothing survives except the opening chorus. For its re-use for the feast of the Visitation, 2nd July 1723, Bach retained Salomo Franck’s arias but composed three recitatives incorporating Marian allusions and the celebrated extended setting of the chorale we know as Jesu, joy of man’s desiring, repeated at the end of both parts. This extended chorale setting, where the lilting 9/8 melodic material of the ritornelli is derived from the chorale itself, is the first of such extended settings of final chorales which provide occasional, more elaborate alternatives to the plain four-part setting. Was it Dame Myra Hess, frequently playing a transcription for piano in her war-time concerts, who so popularised it among English speakers?

In general, the performances are fine: the tempi are good, the text is clear and the playing of a high quality, with 4.4.3.2.1 strings plus oboes, trumpets and a quartet of trombones. But there are two caveats: first, I found the tone of this harpsichord brittle and at times over-obtrusive; no details are given of any of the instruments played, and either the harpsichord was recorded too closely or the instrument was too jangly. Secondly and more importantly, Rademann persists in using a quartet of ‘soloists’ who take no further part in those chorus numbers in which they led off with the parts marked ‘solo’ once the parts are marked ‘tutti’ and doubled by instruments. Even if Rademann – like most German conductors – refuses to accept that these cantatas were sung with one voice to a part, plus ripieno singers on occasions, surely he must recognise that to start a chorus with single soloistic voices and then to silence them when tutti is marked in the score is nonsense. Some of solo voices – Nuria Rial and Benedikt Kristjánsson – would blend with other singers perfectly well, others – and particularly the contralto, Wiebke Lehmkuhl – would not. Her voice – rich and dark though it is – is peculiarly unsuited to Bach. This exposes the dilemma for conductors: if you can’t follow the logic of the scholarship as well as the musical plusses that says “Bach’s primary group of singers – the Concertisten – sing everything: add to them some ripienists if you like in choruses unless it specifically says ‘solo’’, then either choose soloists who will not stand out in the tutti like a sore thumb and make them sing everything, or get single voices from your ‘choir’ to do the incipits if you want different ‘soloists’ to sing the recits and arias.” But both on the grounds of scholarship and plain musicality, Rademann’s solution simply does not work.

This fairly major cavil apart, this would be a good CD to give someone who has no idea what a Bach Cantata is, and needs an introduction; but it will help perpetuate a now rather dated style of performance in which vocal timbres and ensemble skills have not kept pace with the strides taken in the past fifty years by wonderful period instrumental players.

David Stancliffe