JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

‘The fast-emerging cycle of Bach cantatas which John Eliot Gardiner recorded live during his Bach Pilgrimage in 2000, is proving one of the most compelling extended recording projects of the age. Nothing is just ordinary. The opening chorus of Ich ruf zu dir, BWV 177, for instance, magically combines obbligatos for violin and two oboes, three poignantly interweaving lower parts and a dignified supplicatory chorale. Then there is the extraordinarily rich Gott ist mein König, BWV 71, with a penultimate chorus that seductively combines recorders and oboes, and the movingly penitential Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, BWV 131, a stunningly adventurous early cantata. Magdalena Kozena, Nathalie Stutzmann et al. offer fine singing.’

Stephen Pettit, The Sunday Times

The SDG’s release of Bach Cantatas for the Fourth and Fifth Sundays after Trinity opens with BWV 24 Ein ungefärbt Gemüte, recorded in Tewkesbury Abbey as part of The Cheltenham Festival. A far earlier piece follows, BWV 185 Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe was composed in Weimar in 1715 to a text by Salomo Franck and revived by Bach in Leipzig in 1723 and again in 1746/7. Strikingly different in mood is BWV 177 Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, composed in 1732, a chorale cantata based on Agricola’s hymn set unaltered and with no recitatives.

The second CD was recorded in Mühlhausen, where a twenty-two year old Bach took up his second professional post. It lasted for just one year, from June 1707 to 1708. This programme includes BWV 71 Gott ist mein König. There is nothing else quite like Gott ist mein König in Bach’s oeuvre. No other work of his is laid out on such a grand scale in terms of its deployment of four separate instrumental ’choirs’, set against a vocal consort of four singers, an optional Capelle of ripienists and an organ.