j.s. bach. complete recordings. 172 cd hanssler edition

Then consider the conventions of interpretation, venue for recording and size of ensemble etc. Add to this the substantial amount of discretion which the modern editor and performer must exercise in matters of version, ornamentation, instrumentation, choice and allocation of soloists, balance, tempi and alternative numbers.

This makes their presentation outside a church context something to be considered carefully. That context is important: when contemplating, composing, rehearsing and performing each cantata for a known place at the next Sunday's service, it's unlikely that Bach would ever have intended – or could even have conceived – that listeners three hundred years later would experience to them in a concert environment, never mind on CDs. It's clear from even a cursory listen to Bach's cantatas not only that they deserve the very special place in the canon of western music that they are universally agreed to occupy but also that they hold a special place in the heart of Ton Koopman, a sample of whose complete cycle of nearly two-dozen CDs on the Challenge label is reviewed here.īach's cantatas were written throughout much of his life specifically for local performance on the Sundays in the places of worship at or near to which Bach was employed. Similarly the piano sonatas of Beethoven held a special place in the heart of Donald Tovey, a critic of not dissimilar background from the generation before Hopkins. They just meant too much for him to approach head-on. Even when Hopkins' half hour commentary was billed as being centered on one of them, he somehow never seemed to be able to bring himself to talk about the precious sonata in hand: he devoted so much of his allotted time to contextualizing it or making comparisons with Haydn or perhaps themes in the Mozart operas that he (purposely) ran out of time. Mozart's piano sonatas represented something very special for the British music critic Anthony Hopkins, whose 'Talking About Music' ran for decades on BBC radio.

J.s. bach. complete recordings. 172 cd hanssler edition