May 21: Easter Cantatas (Munich Bach-Orchester; Karl Richter, conductor)

Can we hear Jimi?

Bach’s sacred music isn’t my favorite, probably because I’ve never been to a Lutheran mass, and I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. It’s hard to love what’s not yours.

It’s not like my family of Jewish Holocaust refugees kept these LP’s in heavy rotation. I’ll come clean: there was true antipathy at home. I recall in detail my mother reaming out my elementary school principal after she saw my fourth grade class play, which included a scene of me and my classmate Susanne playing a (Roumanian peasant?) couple on our knees and making the sign of the cross.

Bach has zero bad tracks, so listening to this music doesn’t feel like wasted time. And I can connect with the poignancy of the cantatas, especially when they evoke an emotional resonance. But while the Violin Sonatas can live inside me, the Masses will always remain at some remove.

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Me, I’m just a consumer, and I can listen to whatever I want. Unlike me, performers have to make a living — sometimes it’s their job to convey the majesty and sufferings of Christ. There’s no way that all these great 20th century musicians, who lived through a secularizing mass culture, were always connecting to these stories with the deep faith that Bach intended.

Does it matter? Don’t you need to believe it in order to deliver a great performance?

We’ve exchanged piety for pure musicianship. Maybe we can’t comprehend what we’ve lost.

Secular 21st c. Bach stans vs. 18th c. Leipzig Lutherans

Or maybe it’s the inverse: perhaps we’re lucky to have performers at a religious remove, because if the musicians were so pious, they’d have less to give to their performances. All our brilliant recordings might prove the point.

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I’ll continue to do my best. I’m writing about some of the Easter works today (BWV 1, 6, 12, 23, 87, 92, 108, 126). It’s still spring, and there’s a ton of cantatas sitting on my unlistened list.

This 1993 Archiv collection of recordings from the 1970s is by Karl Richter and his Munchener Bach-Orchester. Edith Mathis, Diedrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Schreier, and Anna Reynolds are in the house, as usual. (YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify.)

The highlight of this set for me was the extended Aria from BWV 87 (“Forgive, O Father, our guilt”). We start with an Inspector Gadget-esque theme in the bass, and then some harmonizing oboes before one of them hangs on a Bb pedal tone and just breaks your heart.

Bach goes on a pretty meandering harmonic journey — listen for that repeated and changing climbing bass figure. The late contralto Anna Reynolds sticks the landing:

Check out the exquisite bass note entrance at 0:13 in the second movement of BWV 23. The whole orchestration here is sick. (Schreier singing):

In the Aria from BWV 92, Richter uncharacteristically rushes — he’s way on top of the beat. Karl typically likes to luxuriate in the music, see above, this is surprising.

Schreier is emphatic: “Let Satan rage, rave, crash, the powerful God will make us unconquerable.”

A fun trumpet part to introduce BWV 126. This guy is playing with a little (inadvertent) blues feel?

Excellent oboe counterpoint in the second movement:

More notable orchestration in the third movement of BWV 6: chorus and cello and organ!:

Welcome the Swiss tenor Ernst Haefliger to the Richter crew for the second movement of BWV 108. Great control in some big phrases here:

Let’s conclude by celebrating Anna Reynolds once again in two clips from BWV 12. Her haunting, dusky voice is perfectly suited to this sad cantata, “Weeping, lamenting, worry, apprehension.” It doesn’t immediately jump out as Bach-y — that’s mostly because of Richter’s conducting and arrangement. This is the Recitative:

There’s a tiny moment here from the following movement that I love. Listen to how Reynolds trills her tongue into the G natural “Kreuz” just before the beat at 0:08, nailing the vocalization of the note on the beat. This kind of noticing requires close listening — it’s been one of the more rewarding parts of my listening project.