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VA - Big Bach Cantatas Box (2015)

VA - Big Bach Cantatas Box (2015)

BAND/ARTIST: Various Artists

  • Title: Big Bach Cantatas Box
  • Year Of Release: 2015
  • Label: eOne Music
  • Genre: Classical
  • Quality: FLAC (tracks)
  • Total Time: 6:04:41
  • Total Size: 1.69 GB
  • WebSite:

 Tracklist:

The Bach Guild has created another mega-playlist, the world’s largest single volume of Bach cantatas ever released digitally. To honor the spirit that led to the creation of America’s first and most influential early music label, we’re happy to present nearly 6 hours of Bach cantatas.

There is not a theme here in this playlist – some recordings, like the Christmas cantatas BWV 122 and 133 are presented here for historic reasons – they have been unreleased since the LP era, and they represent two of the dozens of cantatas that had their first recordings via The Bach Guild. Many of these cantatas have seen release in one of the two Big Bach Sets that we released in 2012 and 2013.

The indispensible and fun in a “get a life” kind of way web site, www.bach-cantatas.com lists recordings of the cantatas in the chronological order of their recording date. And a quick perusal shows that the Bach Guild did indeed lead the way in recording Bach’s cantatas. In fact, the completist element that led to the formation of the Guild never was seen through, but the idea was picked up in spirit in the early 1970s with Bach Guild alumni Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt leading the way. I was surprised to find out how much momentum the idea had gathered by the late 1970s, and now, frankly, a complete catalog of Bach’s cantatas isn’t that rare. It’s not as ubiquitous as Beethoven’s symphonies, or Mahler’s symphonies, but for a commitment of 60 plus hours of music, the fact that there are over ten complete cycles all finished in the last 30 years is amazing.

What you’ll hear in this collection is “big boned Bach”. Despite the Bach Guild’s place at the tip of the early music spear, only one of their cantata recordings utilizes early/historic instruments. (yes, it was the first, and it is included in our Gustav Leonhardt tribute box, as it features Harnoncourt, Leonhardt and Alfred Deller).

Anyone who has listened to a cantata recording recently, and then spins these will find themselves a bit shocked. These Bach Guild recordings are full-throated, no holds barred affairs that shouts Bach out to the rafters. Can I get an amen, sung by a very large choir?

Even the most recent recordings from the 1970s, conducted by Johannes Somary and the English Chamber Orchestra with a fine group of English soloists, are, by comparison with today’s interpretations, Technicolor spectacles, musical Ben-Hurs that come to praise God by singing as loud as they can.

If these recordings were sent to critics you’d expect a variation of Paul Simon’s Kodachrome response: “Everything looks worse in black and white.” And these recordings, to many, will sound black and white. Old, several in mono, and after about ten seconds, the mind’s eye conjurs up the sight of scores of fairly large Viennese women singing Bach with a faint touch of Wagner, or Mahler.

But Kodachrome gives us the nice, bright colors, the greens of summer. And so we get the lighter, more nimble textures of our current performance practice with newer recordings. But the discerning listener will find in these Bach Guild recordings an abundance of passion and a thorough love of the works that started The Bach Guild on its 65 year journey.

Classical | FLAC / APE

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  • mufty77
  •  wrote in 17:15
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Many thanks.
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