Legendary Dutch historical-performance conductor and keyboardist Ton Koopman, in his youth a radical but now (in these days of one-voice-per-part revisionism) something of a conservative, has issued a variety of Bach cantata recordings on his own Antoine Marchand label (that's French for Ton Koopman). They come from various places and times, but Koopman has assembled them into interesting new groups, frequently bouncing different kinds of soloists off of a group of pieces linked by a common feature. This disc is an ...
Read More
Legendary Dutch historical-performance conductor and keyboardist Ton Koopman, in his youth a radical but now (in these days of one-voice-per-part revisionism) something of a conservative, has issued a variety of Bach cantata recordings on his own Antoine Marchand label (that's French for Ton Koopman). They come from various places and times, but Koopman has assembled them into interesting new groups, frequently bouncing different kinds of soloists off of a group of pieces linked by a common feature. This disc is an excellent example, and the only thing that keeps it from being an ideal choice for a basic collection of Bach cantatas (at least for those who do not speak German) is the lack of printed texts. Even that may not be a serious problem; texts and translations for most of these cantatas are widely available. Here the common feature is the use of dialogic musical settings, following the frequent tendency of cantata text writers to metaphorically represent the relationship between the soul and...
Read Less