This is the 28th and final album in British conductor John Eliot Gardiner's cycle of Bach's cantatas with his Monteverdi Choir, and it comes with a two-page list of financial backers akin to the subscribers who might have financed secular music in an earlier day. The music was recorded, live with later tweaking, at St. Giles Cripplegate church, London, after the choir had completed its tour of continental churches, performing appropriate cantatas for the day or week of the concert (this one was not performed during ...
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This is the 28th and final album in British conductor John Eliot Gardiner's cycle of Bach's cantatas with his Monteverdi Choir, and it comes with a two-page list of financial backers akin to the subscribers who might have financed secular music in an earlier day. The music was recorded, live with later tweaking, at St. Giles Cripplegate church, London, after the choir had completed its tour of continental churches, performing appropriate cantatas for the day or week of the concert (this one was not performed during Ascension Week, but it's hard to detect any loss of the immediacy of music-making that has been the series' trademark). The series doesn't exactly end with a bang, for the so-called Himmelfahrtsoratorium, Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen, BWV 11, is added to three cantatas; this recitative-heavy little oratorio, included because of its liturgical link to the cantatas (all the music was intended for the Feast of the Ascension), is rarely performed. But Gardiner and company show no evidence of...
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