Bach: Das Kantatenwerk (Complete Cantatas) Vol. 8; Gottlob! nun geht,
BWV 28; Wir danken dir, BWV 29; Freuedich, BWV 30. Wiener Sanger
knaben, Chorus Viennensis, Concentus Musicus Wien, Harnoncourt. Telefunken
SKW 8, 2 discs, stereo, $11.98 with complete score and texts.
Halfway through side 2 of this album I threw out an entire almost-completed article for this space, in favor of what follows. This is perhaps the finest, most profoundly exciting Bach recording of my long life, and that's a lot. It is merely Vol. 8 of an infinite series, to encompass hundreds of these vocal/instrumental church works, the largest part of Bach's musical output. The rest are, or will be, essentially as good. No matter! This is the one that hit me, really stunned me, at this moment in time.
Look! I am sick and tired of dismal market reports on the state of classical music in our forlorn country. I don't care if Bach represents 0.01 percent of our market or even less. So what! If you want market analyses, you can find them all over and in truth they tend towards the dismal. But keep in mind that Bach himself, and any other older musician you wish to name, is absolutely unaffected one way or the other; he remains, his music remains, precisely what it was before. Much more important, you the listener (finances aside), if you have any guts and faith in your own ears, should also be un affected. Does it matter, as you listen in your home, whether a given disc has sold a million copies or a dozen? You are your own master.
If you aren't, then don't follow these record reviews. Go look at the market charts and buy what sells--at the moment. Sorry to be so emphatic; but I continue to live by two faiths, one is in the immense potency of good music, well performed (and I include plenty of pop music, don't think otherwise), and the other is in the ability of most people to enjoy and to understand any really important music, given inclination, time, and good will. If you are craven enough to feel you shouldn't enjoy a record because it's only one percent of some market or other, then go study the charts. You'll be better off.
This recording? First, technically superb engineering, beautifully balanced sound in marvelous acoustics, silent discs, as good as they conic (in Europe). Then, the musical performance, top achievement in a long tradition going back through hundreds of earlier recordings by this unique grouping of Viennese and Dutch musicians. 100 percent authentic instruments of the Bach period-old oboes, fruity sounding, Baroque violins, valveless brass, superb old organ and so on. German thoroughness! Every last detail worked out to perfection. Boy sopranos, counter tenors, an all-male choir exactly like Bach's own. But all this could be (and often is) stuffy and tiresome. Scholar ship, alas, doesn't usually breed living music, just dead reconstruction.
Not here. The crowning glory of this series, and other recent recordings involving Nicholas Harnoncourt, is the extraordinary musical intensity and purity of the performance. Such marvelously fluent shaping, such a verve of rhythm, such a feeling of passion, such perfection of detail, such an electric atmosphere, that my hair stood on end.
This is musical performance at greatest, crackling (so to speak) with excitement and dedication, yet absolutely controlled and economical. You find it in the greatest jazz performances, don't you? You find it here. I defy you to miss it.
For those who know a bit of Bach, double excitement. Side 2 opens with a vast orchestral bustle with brass-so familiar! It is the often played Partita III for solo violin, blossomed out full size, a Bach adaptation. The second segment, big chorus piece, is the Gratias and Dona nobis of the B Minor Mass in its original form. Then-solo arias: a tenor who sings with extraordinary intensity, a boy soprano with the most unearthly, soaring accuracy . . .
Bach composed some 300 cantatas, many of which lasted a day or a week and vanished. Do we need all the hundreds that remain? How about the market? For that, go ask Telefunken.
Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez; Fan tasia para un gentilhombre. Alexandre Lagoya, guitar, Orch. Nationalde l'Opera de Monte Carlo, De Almeida. Philips 6500 454, stereo, $7.95.
Curious how the "classical" guitar engenders predictable music, basically old fashioned, essentially harmonic and almost always with a Spanish lilt, even when "modern" composers take on the composing. These works, dating from as late as the 1950s, sound just as you will guess ahead of time. Maybe it's because of that endlessly potent guitar force (not counting pop and electric!) Andres Segovia. They all write for him what they think he wants. And so does everybody else. One of these two works was composed--see?--"at the suggestion of Andres Segovia." The 20th century does intrude, of course. But mainly in the complex and elaborate texture of the orchestral music, not in the musical idiom. (Of course the big, complex orchestra is in itself wholly out of date now, what with microphones and reverb and what not. But let that pass.) Every recent guitar concerto I have heard is that way. Fancy orchestra. Fancy guitar technique. Simple tunes and nice, old-fashioned harmonies, with the Spanish lilt. Oh yes-there is dissonance. Hafta throw in some dissonance, to show you can. The earlier of these two works (1939) has its momentary dissonances in this fashion but, as is normal, they always seem to tail off into nice old consonant fruitiness.
There is, to be sure, an alternative way to keep the dissonance at bay do a reconstruction of something really old. Hence the piece about the "gentil-hombre," which refashions the music of Gaspar Sanz, a guitarist of the 17th century.
(Audio magazine, Oct. 1974; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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