Review: Herreweghe's Beautiful Bach Cantatas Boxed

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  • Опубликовано: 11 ноя 2024

Комментарии • 24

  • @johnmilbauer7371
    @johnmilbauer7371 Год назад +2

    Herreweghe’s recordings have changed my life for the better since 1988. Baffling how unknown he seems to be among US conductors.

  • @musiconrecord6724
    @musiconrecord6724 Год назад +3

    Finally! They put all these glorious recordings in one box. He is absolutely my go-to in this repertoire for all the reasons you give.

  • @davidaiken1061
    @davidaiken1061 Год назад +4

    Thanks so much for this excellent review. Herreweghe's Bach lacks the aggressive edge of some HIP ensembles. His choir sings with beautiful tone and crisp diction. His soloists are, by and large, among the finest exponents of this music on record. I could go on with superlatives. Suffice it to say that this reissue would be an ideal "starter set" for listeners interested in exploring this vast terrain. I have been exploring it since my youth and these works have never let me down even when they express gloom and doom. Even there, Bach's music seems to aim at consolation, sometimes undermining, as well as illustrating, the text. By the way, Herreweghe went on to record more Bach sacred music, including more Cantatas, for his own label, "Phi." Amazon lists a very inexpensive boxed set containing several cantatas not previously recorded for Harmonia Mundi, plus the complete Motets, the B-Minor Mass, and the St. John Passion (in the rarely recorded 1725 version). More joy!

  • @carlcurtis
    @carlcurtis Год назад +4

    I've got Harnoncourt/Leonhardt's complete set and a large chunk of Suzuki's, but this set looks like an absolute must.

  • @skeptical_Inquirer200
    @skeptical_Inquirer200 Год назад +1

    While the box is not yet available for listening on Spotify, a playlist of all the Herreweghe Bach cantatas is.

  • @mickyandrosie
    @mickyandrosie Год назад +1

    my set arrives today, am looking forward to it! now to hopefully find a cheap book ( prefer to online sources) of all the cantata texts. so I can follow along as recommended by Dave.

  • @geertdecoster5301
    @geertdecoster5301 Год назад +1

    A box of Bach beauties by a Belgian! Here again, thumbs up for Dave. Before listening, get a grip of the context. There's more going on than just some German words sung. Not even poems. Rather raw emotions brought by a believer that Bach really was. Wir danke dir, Gott, wir danken dir!

  • @philippecassagne3192
    @philippecassagne3192 Год назад +5

    Beautiful recordings. But the more I listen to Bach, the more I love Handel, who expressed musically all the human passions, with a treatment of human voices which nobody surpassed (and equalled only by Mozart, to my point of view).

    • @jakobpetropoulos8850
      @jakobpetropoulos8850 Год назад +1

      I would love to know your favourite Handel works. I adore Handel and I have learned a lot more from David's videos dedicated to him and his wonderful compositions.

    • @philippecassagne3192
      @philippecassagne3192 Год назад +2

      @@jakobpetropoulos8850 With pleasure : Giulio Cesare ; Theodora ; Italian cantatas ; Chandos Anthems ; Janet Baker, Lorraine Hunt and Mark Padmore recitals ... to quote just a few !

    • @jakobpetropoulos8850
      @jakobpetropoulos8850 Год назад +1

      @@philippecassagne3192 Great choices, I must get a good recording of his Italian Cantatas, great work. Thank you very much and wish you health. Greetings from Athens Greece.

    • @bbailey7818
      @bbailey7818 Год назад +2

      Even when Handel is dealing with subjects as dark and dour as Bach (the first part of Israel in Egypt aka Funeral Music for Queen Caroline; Brockes Passion; frequent texts in the oratorios or operas like Tamerlano) he somehow seems more life affirming to me.

    • @johnmontoya4067
      @johnmontoya4067 Год назад

      The more I listen to Bach, the more I love Bach! Bach ist Bach und Got ist Got

  • @michaelmasiello6752
    @michaelmasiello6752 Год назад +1

    A lovely review (though I miss your “horrible German”). And what you hear in Herreweghe’s performances is, I believe, central to what the Bach cantatas are about. As bizarre as the Christian thought-world may seem, it really is true that the whole thing hinges on a dialectic in which humility and exaltation, despair and salvation, are just the devotional moments: this music, even in the Passions, is about the grace by which fallen people are redeemed. This is not my belief system, I should add; it is just one in which I see beauty and pathos (along with some less-felicitous things, such as those you discussed in your touching video about why you resisted the St. Matthew Passion). Sometimes folks sound like Handel is all sunshine and Bach all darkness. But I think that’s crazy talk. How inestimably lucky we are to have so much from both of them!
    As for these performances, they are spectacular, and I am so glad to see them reissued. Herreweghe always emphasizes the light in Bach.

  • @bendingcaesar65
    @bendingcaesar65 Год назад +1

    Does anyone know if Harmonia Mundi's recent reissues from their back catalog are real factory-pressed CDs, or CD-Rs? I can't seem to get a reply from them, which is not a good sign.

    • @bendingcaesar65
      @bendingcaesar65 Год назад +1

      I finally heard from HM. Yes, these are real CDs.

  • @JanPBtest
    @JanPBtest Год назад

    0:55 Herreweghe very much agrees 🙂he is big on rhetoric (which was a school subject in Bach's time) and seems to know its implications to performance practice.

  • @SFguy415
    @SFguy415 Год назад

    Ha! Finally someone calls a spade a spade. I only listen to these (and enjoy a few) because I don't speak German.

  • @SHawk48
    @SHawk48 Год назад

    It appears that there is no overlap of this set with the 6 cantatas on 2 disks with Herreweghe and the same forces on Virgin Classics.

  • @stevemcclue5759
    @stevemcclue5759 Год назад

    "sin and death and horror" - Hey, Whaddaya want? A happy ending?

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  Год назад

      It couldn't hurt.

    • @adamfrye246
      @adamfrye246 Год назад +1

      ​@@DavesClassicalGuideA low dose could help keep a person spiritually "sober".