J. S. Bach
Cantatas
BWV 70 [22:59]
BWV 132 [17:40]
BWV 147 [28:07]
Soprano: Brigitte Geller
Counter-tenor: Michael Chance
Tenor: Jan Kobow
Bass: Dietrich Henschel
Monteverdi Choir
English Baroque Soloists
John Eliot Gardiner
Live recordings from the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage:
Michaeliskirche, Lüneburg, Germany.
Volume 13 CD 2
King Arthur, or The British Worthy, a semi-opera by Henry Purcell (1691).
1-3. King arthur overture
4. King arthur act I: woden, first to thee
5. King arthur act I: the lot is cast-brave souls
6. King arthur act I: I call to wodens hall
7. King arthur act I: come if you dare-first act tune
8. King arthur act II: hither, this way
9. King arthur act II: let not a moon-born elf
10. King arthur act II: hither, this way
11. King arthur act II: come, follow me
12. King arthur act II: how blest are shepherds
13. King arthur act II: symphony-shepherd, leave decoying
14. King arthur act II: come shepherds, lead up-hornpipe
15. King arthur act II: second act tune
16. King arthur act III: prélude-what ho!
17. King arthur act III: what power art thou
18. King arthur act III: thou doting fool
19. King arthur act III: great love
20. King arthur act III: no part of my dominion
21. King arthur act III: prélude
22. King arthur act III: see we assemble-dance
23. King arthur act III: tis I that have warmd ye
24. King arthur act III: sound a parley-tis love
25. King arthur act III: third act tune: hornpipe
26. King arthur act IV: aire
27. King arthur act IV: two daughters of this aged stream
28. King arthur act IV: passacaglia
29. King arthur act V: trumpet tune
30. King arthur act V: ye blustring brethren of the skies
31. King arthur act V: symphony
32. King arthur act V: round thy coasts
33. King arthur act V: for folded flocks
34. King arthur act V: your hay it is mowed
35. King arthur act V: fairest isle
36. King arthur act V: you say tis love
37. King arthur act V: trumpet tune
38. King arthur act V: saint george
39. King arthur act V: our natives
40. King arthur act V: chaconne
Wendy Roobol, soprano
Mijke Sekhuis, soprano
Klaartje van Veldhoven, soprano
Derek Lee Ragin, countertenor
Gunther Vandeven, countertenor
Lester Lardenoye, countertenor
Mattijs Hoogendijk, tenor
Joost van Velzen, tenor
Pieter Hendriks, baritone
Ragnar van Linden van den Heuvell, baritone
Bas Kuijlenburg, baritone
Wiebe Pier Cnossen, baritone
BarokOpera Amsterdam
Frédérique Chauvet, direction
Baroque music is a period or style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era followed the Renaissance music era, and was followed in turn by the Classical era. Baroque music forms a major portion of the «classical music» canon, and is now widely studied, performed, and listened to. Key composers of the Baroque era include Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, Claudio Monteverdi, Domenico Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Henry Purcell, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Arcangelo Corelli, Tomaso Albinoni, François Couperin, Giuseppe Tartini, Heinrich Schütz, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Dieterich Buxtehude, and Johann Pachelbel.
The Baroque period saw the creation of common-practice tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key; this kind of arrangement has continued to be used in almost all Western popular music. During the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts. Baroque concerts were typically accompanied by a basso continuo group (comprising chord-playing instrumentalists such as harpsichordists and lute players improvising chords from a figured bass part) while a group of bass instruments—viol, cello, double bass—played the bassline. A characteristic Baroque form was the dance suite. While the pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were designed purely for listening, not for accompanying dancers.
During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation (typically improvised by performers), made changes in musical notation (the development of figured bass as a quick way to notate the chord progression of a song or piece), and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established the mixed vocal/instrumental forms of opera, cantata and oratorio and the instrumental forms of the solo concerto and sonata as musical genres. Many musical terms and concepts from this era, such as toccata, fugue and concerto grosso are still in use in the 2010s. Dense, complex polyphonic music, in which multiple independent melody lines were performed simultaneously (a popular example of this is the fugue), was an important part of many Baroque choral and instrumental works.
The term «baroque» comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning «misshapen pearl». Negative connotations of the term first occurred in 1734, in a criticism of an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau, and later (1750) in a description by Charles de Brosses of the ornate and heavily ornamented architecture of the Pamphili Palace in Rome; and from Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1768 in the Encyclopédie in his criticism of music that was overly complex and unnatural. Although the term continued to be applied to architecture and art criticism through the 19th century, it was not until the 20th century that the term «baroque» was adopted from Heinrich Wölfflins art-history vocabulary to designate a historical period in music.
Hauser and Lana Trotovsek performing Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott from St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb, October 2017.
Elisabeth Fuchs, conductor
Filmed and edited by MedVid production
Sound and mixing by Morris Studio
“China’s premier interpreter of Bach”, is what International Piano Magazine called Yuan Sheng. A pupil of Solomon Mikowsky (Manhattan School of Music) and notably Rosalyn Tureck, Yuan Sheng extensively studied the performance practice of Baroque music. Equally at home at the harpsichord he has an instinctive feeling for the possibilities, sonorities and touch of the instrument at hand, so that “the listener might easily have imagined the composer at the keyboard” (Boston Intelligencer).
The title is misleading: the English Suites are more ‘French’ in character than the French Suites, which are more characteristic of the Italian style. ‘By design the composer is here less learned than in his other suites,’ remarked one early biographer, ‘and has mostly used a pleasing, more predominant melody.’ Just so, and the same is true of the pair of suites BWV 818 and 819 which fall outside the collection but belong with it in terms of style. To all of them Yuan Sheng brings considered tempi and precise articulation in the mould of Tureck. To Bach at his most uncomplicated, Sheng brings the virtues of simplicity and clarity.
Again Yuan Sheng draws the listener into his highly intelligent musical discourse, vibrant and moving, speaking through the medium of a modern Steinway piano.
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
Artist: Yuan Sheng (piano)