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Reviewer:
Peter Quantrill The setting of Nun danket alle Gott by Altnickol was once erroneously ascribed to his father-in-law: thus accorded a place in the BWV appendix, it has surely attracted more recordings – at least three before this one – than its relatively undistinguished merits would otherwise deserve. In six minutes of lively counterpoint the copyist shows himself an assiduous imitator, one too schooled in his master’s ways to commit any solecism that would have offended Bach, save in want of his own imagination’s exercise. Emerging with more confidence from its model of Jesu meine Freude, the 12-verse Befiel du deine Wege makes play with genre types such as chorale settings, ‘straight’ and elaborate, chromatic fugue (verse 2) and, more originally, a kind of concerted drama shaking a Lutheran fist at devilish stratagems. Johann Sebastian’s motet-writing also supplied his son Johann Christoph Friedrich – ‘the Bückeburg Bach’ – with a template for his treatment of the ‘Wachet auf’ chorale, as much in terms of virtuoso vocal-consort techniques as structure. The chorale theme weaves its way through all three movements including a delightfully sprung central panel (‘Zion hört’), which Frieder Bernius effectively assigns to a quartet of soloists drawn from the ranks of his Kammerchor Stuttgart. Reduced to forces of 7.7.5.5, Bernius’s ensemble lives up to its own standards of excellence with splendidly fresh and vivid singing that makes its rivals on record sound tentative or unwieldy by comparison. The choir is backed by a discreet organ continuo rather than the more obtrusive (if historically plausible) string-band accompaniment for an all-Altnickol album from the Norddeutscher Figuralchor on Carus (for whom Bernius makes most of his records). That said, a Capriccio recording of Bach family motets from 2010 shouldn’t be overlooked by those hankering after all-male voices in this repertoire. Under their equally longstanding and underrated director Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, the Tölz Boys’ Choir bring more unaffected polish to both Altnickol’s Befiel du deine Wege and the most poignantly affective work on either album, Ich lieg und schlafe by JCF Bach. Less radical or unpredictable than anything by his brother CPE, the arpeggiated melodies and moulded suspensions of this funeral motet from 1780 nevertheless demonstrate how even an unstoried member of the family could move with the times: English readers with choral backgrounds may come away with SS Wesley’s Blessed be the God and Father, from 1853, echoing gently in the mind’s ear. |
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