Berliner Barock Solisten, Thomas Quasthoff - J.S. Bach: Kantaten BWV 56, 158 & 82 (2004) [SACD]

The celebrated baritone Thomas Quasthoff has recently signed a new exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon to continue the highly successful collaboration, which reached another peak when the singer was awarded his second Grammy “Best Classical Singer”, for his recording of Schubert Orchestrated Songs with Anne Sofie von Otter accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abbado.
Following the release of his critically acclaimed Romantic Songbook with a collection of lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Loewe, Mendelssohn, Wolf and Strauss earlier this year, here is his new solo project with great commercial potential: Bach Cantatas with the Berliner Barock Solisten (members of the Berlin Philharmonic, among them Albrecht Mayer) under the direction of Rainer Kussmaul, and the RIAS-Kammerchor (chamber choir).
The album features the two well-known and popular bass solo cantatas Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (BWV 56) and Ich habe genug (BWV 82), and the cantata Der Friede sei mit dir (BWV 158), three classics of the Baroque repertoire (Thomas Quasthoff numbers the aria “Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen” from Cantata BWV 82 among “the most beautiful things in all of Baroque music”).
Bach Cantatas is the result of Thomas Quasthoff’s and the Berliner Barock Solisten’s planned tour of this repertoire in Germany pre-Christmas 2004 and autumn 2005 – and January 2006 in the USA. The singer has already given a number of concerts with this ensemble – and discovered that the musical ideas of these Berlin Philharmonic players are very closely related to his own.
The secret of this successful collaboration can most plainly be found in the manner in which Quasthoff and the Berliner Barock Solisten recreate Bach’s musical language for a new audience. The strings play on modern instruments but use Baroque bows, which serves to make the sound homogeneous and plastic but not too thin. And Quasthoff’s bass-baritone voice, with its natural vibrato, blends perfectly into this ensemble.
An enormous attraction of Thomas Quasthoff’s Bach interpretation is that he approaches the works using his expressive powers; he does more than illustrate the emotional states in Bach’s music – he breathes into them something entirely his own. “My approach to Bach” he says, “is marked by a highly personal experience of this music. And this personal experience is what I’m trying to convey to the listeners.”
Thomas Quatshoff was recently awarded with the Grammy 2006 for this album. It is the third Grammy Thomas Quasthoff is honoured with.