JS Bach: Cantatas BWV 106, 118b, 198 - Monteverdi Choir ,Gardiner

Johann Sebastian Bach
Cantatas BWV 106, 118b, 198
Argenta, Chance, Johnson, Varcoe, The Monteverdi Choir,
The English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
Archiv 429 782-2

Twenty years intervened between the composition of these deeply affecting funeral cantatas. Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit dates from 1707 when Bach was, for a short while, organist of the Blasiuskirche at Malhausen; Lass, Farstin, lass noch einen Strahl, on the other hand, is a Leipzig work which he wrote and performed in 1727 at the memorial service for Christiane Eberhardine, Queen of Poland, Electoral Princess of Saxony and the wife of Augustus the Strong. Additionally, John Eliot Gardiner includes the little funeral motet 0 Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht in its later version (c.1740) with two "litui" - Gardiner interprets these as trumpets rather than horns - oboes, bassoon and strings.

Any fears that the elegiac spirit might, in this instance be too well sustained, can be dispelled by the immense variety present in the music - variety in form, colour and theological outlook. The central theme of Cantata No. 106, the "Actus tragicus" as it is designated in Penzel's copy, is that of death according to the Old Testament Covenant contrasted with death according to the New Testament Gospels. Cantata No. 198, on the other hand, is of a different character altogether. The author was Gottsched who was soon to become a leading figure in the German Enlightenment; his text evokes a mood somewhat similar to the Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard by his English contemporary, Thomas Gray.

These performances are technically refined and affectionately realized. Anthony Rolfe Johnson is affectingly plaintive in the "Actus tragicus", though not without a hint of vocal strain in the upper reaches of his tessitura, and Stephen Varcoe well-focused, with just the right degree of assertiveness in his aria "Bestelle dein Haus". He and Michael Chance respond tenderly to those sections of the text directly connected with the Crucifixion, while Nancy Argenta makes a brief but lyrical contribution to the whole.

My sensibilities were more readily beguiled by Gardiner's performance of the "Actus tragicus" and of the Motet than by the Funeral Ode for Queen Christiane Eberhardine. My chief reservation concerns the three choruses, which to my ears fail to realize fully the pathos of Bach's music. They provide a powerful B minor framework while at the same time providing a lively contrast with more lightly textured recitatives and arias. I find Gardiner's tempos a shade too fast and the approach in general a little bland. Jfirgen Jfirgens, more successfully than any other perhaps, captured the gracefulness and poignancy of these movements in his Telefunken recording of the work ( [1/67 - nla). Much else here, though, is first-rate and the disc, as a whole, can be confidently recommended.

N.A., Gramophone Magazine 1991