Bach - Christmas Cantatas, BWV40, 91, 110, 121
Soloists; Monteverdi Choir; English Baroque Soloists / Gardiner
SDG SDG113

Release date October 2005

The current abundance of Bach cantata series on CD seems to fly in the face of the generally gloomy market conditions that we’re always hearing about. Adding to the existing sets from Helmut Rilling and the joint project from Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt we have three ongoing series from Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki and Sir John Eliot Gardiner. As you probably know by now, Sir John Eliot’s series is based on an un-precedented project in which he performed all of the extant cantatas during the millennial year, as far as possible on their relevant liturgical days. The most recent issue was one of the very last concerts, being recorded on Christmas Day, 2000 in St. Bartholomew's in Manhattan. Although none of these cantatas are well-known, they are, in Sir John Eliot’s words “…fabulous …it’s a travesty that (the Christmas Oratorio) eclipses them in popular esteem.” Despite the enormous amount of unfamiliar music that the Monteverdi Choir and the EBS had to get to grips with (they had to learn twelve cantatas during Christmas week alone!), the standards are formidably high. The Monteverdis’ exact diction and thrilling sense of direction in the opening chorus of Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ (All praise to thee, Jesus Christ) speaks of the emotional commitment as well as of the technical precision of these musicians. As always with the Monteverdis, the choir approaches texts with the care of a lieder-singer; if only this were true of other ensembles! Sir John Eliot’s has said that the recordings that make up the series were “…a corollary of the concerts, not their raison d’ętre”, and there is certainly no hint here of a ‘safety first’ mentality; check out the hair-raising tempo for the tenor aria Christenkinder, freuet euch (Christian children, now rejoice)! The concert ended with one of Bach’s most jovial Christmas cantatas, Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (Let our mouth be full of laughter), whose opening chorus ingeniously reworks the overture to the fourth orchestral suite. This is irresistible music-making; although there’s no audience noise, there’s a very real sense of a dangerous, thrilling live event about the performance of this cantata in particular. Packaging and presentation are exemplary, and the documentation includes a rather moving personal note by the bass soloist, Peter Harvey. I doubt whether we’ll see a more desirable Christmas record this year.

Reviewed by Sandy Matheson