Bach's Christmas Oratorio
Bach's Christmas Oratorio
The Gramophone Choice
Monika Frimmer sop Yoshikazu Mera counterten Gerd Türk ten Peter Kooij bass Bach Collegium Japan / Masaaki Suzuki
BIS BIS-CD941/2 (145' · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
The six cantatas that make up Bach’s Christmas Oratorio are part of a unified work celebrating not just Christmas itself but also the New Year and Epiphany. Masaaki Suzuki faces plentiful if not invariably stiff competition in this work. In fact, it outstrips most of its rivals, in respect of both vocal and instrumental considerations. A notable quality in Masaaki Suzuki’s direction is his feeling for naturally expressive contours, allowing the music to breathe freely. Best of all, perhaps, is his refusal to pay even lip service to Bach’s supposed predilection for fast tempi. Everything here seems to be exceptionally well judged, which isn’t to say that the pace of individual movements is necessarily slower than those in competing versions but that it’s more interrelated with a concept of each section as a whole, and more textually conscious than some.
The soloists are generally very good indeed. Yoshikazu Mera makes a distinctive contribution and Gerd Türk is a communicative singer whose light articulation suits his partly narrative role. Peter Kooij never puts a foot wrong, while Monika Frimmer makes a favourable impression in her duet with Kooij, ‘Herr, dein Mitleid, dein Erbarmen’. A small, well-balanced choir of technical agility and an accomplished quorum of instrumentalists set the seal on an outstanding achievement.
Additional Recommendation
Sibylla Rubens sop Ingeborg Danz contr James Taylor, Marcus Ullmann tens Hanno Müller-Brachmann bass Gächinger Kantorei; Stuttgart Bach Collegium / Helmuth Rilling
Hänssler Classic CD92 076 (144' · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
Energetic director Helmut Rilling is more fired up than ever here. The choruses crackle with thrilling fervour and a blistering attack and shine to notes which, alongside a forthright Gächinger Kantorei, carry the day persuasively on modern instruments. There will always be those for whom Rilling represents an inflexibility of phrasing and unyielding articulation in Bach, paradoxically more reminiscent of the least alluring elements of period performance than the ‘ebb and flow’ of mainstream consciousness. This recording doubtless reinforces the odd prejudice, though the habitually hard-edged orchestral textures of the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart seem more mollifying and warm-hearted in movements such as the pastoral Sinfonia at the beginning of Part 2 and the divinely inspired ‘Schlafe, mein Liebster’ later in the same cantata (it must be said now, flawed by a tiresomely repeated pull-up before the second phrase).
James Taylor is a natural Evangelist: articulate, discriminating, exacting if not emotionally candid. He also retains focus throughout the events of each tableau and gives clearly etched readings. Yet much of the credit must also go to the outstanding solo singing. Sibylla Rubens and Hanno Müller-Brachmann are stunning in the pivotal duet of Part 3, ‘Herr, dein Mitleid’, and Ingeborg Danz sings with exquisite and gentle poise in the scene-setting ‘Bereite dich, Zion’. If her ‘Schlafe’ is a touch disappointing, then that reflects the weight of expectation which surrounds this central aria. If you prefer a mezzo to a countertenor, then only Anne Sofie von Otter for Gardiner or Christa Ludwig for Richter (both Archiv) can better her largely satisfying contribution. Müller-Brachmann is a fine bass soloist in ‘Grosser Herr’ and as movingly intimate as Michael George for Philip Pickett (Decca) in the recitative with chorale, ‘Immanuel, O süsses Wort’. Rubens is on really terrific form throughout, and her ‘Nur in Wink’ in Part 6 is a model of outstanding Bach singing.
There’s a spiritual containment which serves its purpose here – there’s absolutely no sentimental guff – and yet it perhaps trespasses into the clinical too readily. Rilling, as ever, raises hopes and only intermittently fulfils them, but this is still a distinguished reading.
