Bach: Lutheran Masses, Vol. 2
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CD Details
Performer: Johann Sebastian BachOrchestra: Nancy Argenta
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2000-03-28
Music Label: Chandos
Soundtracks:
- Allegro
- Largo
- Allegro
- I: Kyrie
- II: Gloria (Vivace)
- III: Gratias
- IV: Domine Deus
- V: Quoniam (Adagio)
- VI: Cum Sancto Spiritu
- I: Kyrie
- II: Gloria
- III: Domine Deus
- IV: Qui Tollis (Adagio)
- V: Quoniam (Vivace)
- VI: Cum Sancto Spiritu (Presto)
Music reviews of Bach: Lutheran Masses, Vol. 2
Music Review: For the Bach Fan Who Has Everything...
Rating: 5 Stars
... here's Volume 2 of a performance good enough to justify doubling your collection.
OVOP (One voice per part) performances were 'revolutionary 20 years ago; this recording of Bach's four Lutheran masses demonstrates why OVPP should now be considered standard: you can hear the parts! and you can hear the instrumental lines! and the voices sound like human voices! Intonation is sharper (assuming the singers are good enough) and rhythms are more incisive. Scholarship has shown that OVPP was the norm in Bach's musical milieu, but that's a musicologist's problem. My judgement is based purely on listening.
I'm very fond of the Philippe Herreweghe performance of these masses, for a number of reasons. Herreweghe's chorus is amazingly tight and expressive, and the big sound he coaxes from them is surely impressive. His performance has been re-released as part of a 4-CD box, which I've recently reviewed. However...
.... this performance by the Purcell Quartet (masquerading as a chamber orchestra), with three very fine "early music" singers and one operatic soprano who knows how to sing in such an ensemble, is a good deal more exciting. I suspect that it will be too exciting, too upbeat, for listeners who want their Bach to sound like the choir they heard in church in rural Minnesota when they were children. This is not a solemn, pious performance of Bach. It's a Revelation, though... a revelation of how Italianate Bach's music was, even in these small Latin masses for Lutheran services on certain holidays.
The vocal ensemble of Nancy Argenta and Michael Chance, by the way, is very satisfying. I mention that because I criticized a performance by Chance with Emma Kirkby in a recent review. Bravo, Michael!
Fortunately there are samples available here on amazon. Plug in your best headphones and listen! I'll bet you'll wind up buying, even if you already own the Bach Edition from Brilliant Classics.
Description of Bach: Lutheran Masses, Vol. 2
Joshua Rifkin and Andrew Parrott no longer seem to be lonely voices crying in the proverbial wilderness. The idea of performing Bach's sacred music with only soloists seems to be catching on a bit. This recording, for instance, completes Chandos's one-singer-per-part set of Bach's four "Lutheran" Masses (i.e., Kyrie and Gloria only), performed by the (enlarged) Purcell Quartet with all the transparency, exactitude, and grace they brought to volume?1 of the series. Perhaps surprisingly, it's the instrumental detail--usually buried underneath the voices of a choir but clearly audible here--that's striking: take the lively oboe figures that give a Handelian feel to the Gloria of the G?major Mass, for example. If you've heard the Gabrieli Consort & Players' rip-roaring rendition of the F?major Mass, the Purcell Quartet's performance may seem a bit too genteel--but only a bit: it's both energetic and graceful. The excellent soprano and alto from the first disc, Susan Gritton and Robin Blaze, are replaced here by Nancy Argenta and Michael Chance, two baroque singing stars of the 1980s: Argenta sounds fairly good, much less shaky than she did on Masaaki Suzuki's St.?Matthew Passion, but Chance sounds dismayingly unsteady. On the other hand, tenor Mark Padmore uses an impressive range of vocal colors (sometimes sounding almost like a countertenor himself), bass Peter Harvey brings real merriment to his virtuoso aria "Gratias agimus," and the horn players (on valveless instruments) toss off their difficult parts with real aplomb. This disc may have a few more flaws than its predecessor, but it's got skillful, very listenable performances--yet another demonstration that this supposedly kooky Bach-as-madrigal idea can really work. --Matthew WestphalBach, Johann Sebastian CDs
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