Even at their most celebratory, John Eliot Gardiner's performances of Bach's cantatas are essentially very personal. In this two-disc set of seven cantatas for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity and for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, Gardiner and his English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir deliver performances that have an inward, almost intimate relationship to their subjects. This does not preclude grandness -- the bass aria with trumpets and tympani from Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir, BWV 130, is truly ...
Read More
Even at their most celebratory, John Eliot Gardiner's performances of Bach's cantatas are essentially very personal. In this two-disc set of seven cantatas for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity and for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, Gardiner and his English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir deliver performances that have an inward, almost intimate relationship to their subjects. This does not preclude grandness -- the bass aria with trumpets and tympani from Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir, BWV 130, is truly glorious -- but the performers are so united in their concentrated attention that the music seems animated by a single spirit. In the quieter arias, the more dramatic recitatives, and the more intense chorales, the performers express their common faith in the music, the text and the exalted spirituality of their combination. Recorded in the Abbaye d'Ambronay on September 24 and Unser Lieben Frauen in Bremen on September 29, 2000, the sound is wonderfully warm and amazingly realistic...
Read Less
