BACH: Cantatas Vol. 42, Nos. 13, 16, 32, 72 – Rachel Nicholls, soprano/ Robin Blaze, counter-tenor/ Gerd turk, tenor/ Peter Kooij, bass/ Bach Collegium Japan/ Masaaki Suzuki, conductor – BIS multichannel SACD 1711, 75:24 **** [Distr. by Qualiton]:
Moving along nicely is this series by Masaaki Suzuki and company, now reaching to the 42nd volume. These four cantatas are part of the eight that Bach completed at the end/beginning of 1725/1726, the former being his last great Leipzig cantata year. After that (meaning most of 1726) the pickings get far slimmer, as the composer stopped the weekly cycle he had so diligently embarked on two years earlier. Here we have works for the three Sundays after Epiphany, and each contains its fair share of glories. Only BVW 16, Lord God we praise you serves as the odd man out, being a New Year’s Day cantata of decidedly non-festive nature, as the normal trumpet and horn parts are in abstentia. Maybe they were needed somewhere else that weekend, and there is a later addition by the composer of one horn part, but the original score is clear: strings, oboes, and organ. This would have been a bit of a downer for those Leipzigers of 1726, but Bach’s magic does work its way by the end, and a certain degree of festivity is enjoyed despite the absence of the noisemakers.
I will mention one other of these pieces by name, that of My sighs, my tears (BVW 13), solely for the sake of the delightful and affecting tenor lament that features two recorders with oboe da caccia—surely a remarkable scoring in any age, and one here that is particularly ripe with sentiment. Well, maybe I also will have to speak of BWV 32, Dearest Jesus my desire since it is an example of what Bach called a “Concerto in Dialogo”, whereas the soprano takes the part of the soul while the bass captures the role of Jesus in a wonderful back and forth setting based on the passage of the boy Jesus in the temple from St. Luke. Here the analogy is of the Christian losing Christ, searching for Him, and gaining Him back again. And I guess while I am at it I should also speak of BWV 72, All things according to God’s will, a wonderful work that includes a degree of musical pleading, the words “Lord, if thou wilt” being repeated no less than nine times in the alto recitative.
The series goes from strength to strength, and Suzuki easily trumps Koopman, and especially reigns in the DSD surround department. There are other excellent series underway that we will have to see about—this is becoming something of a Bach cantata golden age despite the prevalence of period recordings of all sorts of dogmatic underpinnings. But these are among these best—Gardiner is close, but is not surround, so make your choice or choose them all.
— Steven Ritter
