The second volume of Ton Koopman’s integral cantata cycle focuses on works written between 1713 and 1715, when Bach was in the service of the austere, puritanical Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. Most of the Weimar cantatas are intimate in tone, reflecting the limited forces he had at his disposal in the Duke’s chapel. Two recorded here are for solo voices only: No. 152, with its delicate, pastel instrumental colouring (recorder, oboe, viola d’amore, viola da gamba and continuo), and No. 199 for solo soprano, where the text’s heavily penitential, self-abasing tone and (to us) tasteless imagery inspired two of Bach’s most piercingly expressive arias. Two of the other cantatas are predominantly solo works: No. 18, with its (in Bach) unique scoring for four solo violas and its dramatic scena mingling recitative and choral intonations, and the joyous Advent Cantata, No. 132. The remaining sacred cantatas here employ chorus more fully, though all but one have an essentially chamber-musical character; the exception is the Whitsun Cantata, No. 172, whose panoply of trumpets and drums was no doubt specially requisitioned for the occasion by Duke Wilhelm. Sitting rather oddly alongside the sacred works are the Quodlibet, a fragment of an early wedding cantata interleaving nonsense rhymes with snatches of Latin, and the agreeable but unmemorable Italian solo bass Cantata, Amore traditore, whose authenticity is as dubious as that of the Rensch portrait reproduced in the booklet.
As anyone who has acquired the previous volume in this series (9/95) would expect, Koopman’s readings are polished, mellifluous and light-textured, inclining towards Gallic elegance rather than Lutheran gravitas. Unfazed by Koopman’s choice of high ‘choral’ pitch (around a semitone above modern pitch), the 17-strong Amsterdam chorus are agile and fresh-toned, though occasionally, as in the dancing final chorus of No. 182, encouraged to fussy-sounding dynamic shadings. The expert and responsive orchestra contain some of the finest players in the business, among them the oboist Marcel Ponseele (phrasing with soaring eloquence in the grieving opening Sinfonia and the alto aria “Kreuz und Krone” in No. 12) and the viola da gambist Jaap ter Linden. Following his policy throughout the series, Koopman includes alternative versions (with different instrumentation) of movements in Cantatas Nos. 18 and 182 – though it’s a pity he doesn’t give us No. 182’s alto aria “Leget euch dem Heiland unter” in the revised scoring (flute instead of recorder) that Bach made for Leipzig performances, or the two final movements of No. 12 in the version with slide trumpet (tromba da tirarsi).
The bulk of the work here falls to the soloists, who, with one exception, remain unchanged from Vol. 1. The newcomer is Christoph Pregardien, taking over from Guy de Mey and one of this set’s prime assets: a natural, idiomatic Bach singer, at home with the high tessitura, shaping his lines expressively, always alert to the meaning of the text. He brings real drama and virtuosity to his outbursts of anguished coloratura in the central scena of No. 18 (from 2'17''). Barbara Schlick sings with her customary grace and clarity, though not without the occasional hint of strain at the top of her compass. In her solo cantata, No. 199, the outer arias, both with oboe obbligato, come off well (a delectable spring to the final gigue), the central “Tief gebuckt und voller Reue” rather less successfully – she sounds stretched by the tessitura here (not surprisingly, given Koopman’s choice of pitch), and intonation sometimes suffers.
Schlick and Klaus Mertens, another clean, dependable singer of strong Bachian instinct, are responsive, involving soloists in No. 152, with Mertens effortlessly negotiating the huge intervals in his two recitatives. In Amore traditore Mertens sounds happy enough in the first aria, vigorously pointing the cross-rhythms, but too reticent for the decisive, defiant sentiments of the second – though he’s not helped here by a balance which overfavours Koopman’s harpsichord. Kai Wessel, the alto, sings smoothly, if a touch plummily, but rarely sounds engaged with the text. In the searching aria “Leget euch dem Heiland unter” from No. 182 he sounds emotionally non-committal, no match for Paul Esswood on the Harnoncourt version from the complete cycle on Teldec.
Koopman undoubtedly scores over that pioneering period-instrument cycle in technical accomplishment; and, whatever their historical justification, the assorted boy soloists used by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt simply cannot do full justice to Bach’s extraordinary demands. In several cantatas Koopman, with his verve, lightness of touch and feeling for dance rhythms, seems to me to capture the spirit of the music more truly than his predecessors – No. 18, for instance, where Harnoncourt is at times a shade laboured, No. 172 (though Koopman’s florid organ obbligato is too prominent in the duet “Komm, lass mich nicht langer warten”) and No. 152. Conversely, Koopman can sound over-suave in music like the lamenting opening chorus of No. 12, later remodelled as the Crucifixus of the B minor Mass (here Leonhardt is altogether graver and weightier, with a more strongly defined bass line), and the wonderfully scored sonata that opens No. 182, whose dotted rhythms trip along too easily – little sense here of the majesty or poignancy caught by Harnoncourt. Koopman’s Bach does not quite suffer enough for my taste. That said, there is far more to admire and enjoy than to cavil at; and in the crucial matter of solo vocal and instrumental contributions this new set is often outstanding. As on the previous volume, the recorded sound is vivid and reverberant, though I did detect a worrying background disturbance in Mein Herze schwimmt (disc 3, tracks 8 and 10). The chorus are balanced rather more backwardly than I find ideal.'