There is certainly no shortage of recordings of Bach's motets, and the vocal-instrumental group Pygmalion and its leader, Raphaël Pichon, deserve credit right off the bat for achieving one that stands out from the crowd. They even do this in several ways. First, there are a cappella performances of the motets, and, increasingly more common, those where the choral lines are doubled by strings, something indicated by some sets of surviving parts. There are few in which the two procedures are mixed, perhaps for musical reasons ...
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There is certainly no shortage of recordings of Bach's motets, and the vocal-instrumental group Pygmalion and its leader, Raphaël Pichon, deserve credit right off the bat for achieving one that stands out from the crowd. They even do this in several ways. First, there are a cappella performances of the motets, and, increasingly more common, those where the choral lines are doubled by strings, something indicated by some sets of surviving parts. There are few in which the two procedures are mixed, perhaps for musical reasons, as they are here (the dense polyphony of Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225, is left unaccompanied). Second, the motets are interspersed with pieces from an anthology of Bach's time, Florilegium Portense , containing German and Italian choral works dating back to the 16th century. These tend to leave one wanting more information; the pieces from the book included, while attractive enough, don't have any clear connection to the Bach motets, and it's uncertain why the...
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