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Bach composed four cantatas for Ascension Day in Leipzig, and here are two of them complemented by the premiere recording of an Ascension cantata by Telemann, who wrote more than 30, this one for Frankfurt in 1721.
The most familiar is Cantata No 11, first performed in 1738 and known as the Ascension Oratorio for its similarities to the earlier Christmas and Easter oratorios in both its Gospel-narrating recitatives and its reliance on arias and choruses recycled from earlier works, some of them secular. Naturally this is jubilant music, and the trumpet-anddrum-propelled opening and closing choruses are full of brisk excitement, fluent and joyful in the hands of the everexcellent Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. The typical Vox Luminis sound is by nature soft-edged and resonant, yet while Lionel Meunier’s choir of 15 voices may not have the attack and presence of some in this repertoire, their approach is a satisfying alternative, deepening the texture and binding together the wider tonal picture. They provide their own soloists, too: Alexander Chance sings with penetrating emotion in his aria (originally part of a wedding cantata and later re-adapted as the Agnus Dei of the B minor Mass), though the accompaniment here is surprisingly heavy-footed; and in hers Zsuzsi Tóth has a beautiful childlike ring, even if a tight flutter on longer notes may not suit everyone.
The shorter Cantata No 128 is from 1725 and opens with a scamperingly joyful chorale-based chorus driven forwards by chortling horns. There is an imposing aria for trumpet and bass (commandingly sung by Sebastian Myrus), in which the sudden pull-up for a pensive recitative passage is expertly managed by Meunier. The duet for alto and tenor with oboe obbligato and bassoon on the bass line is impeccably performed.
Telemann’s cantata is, as so often, full of musical surprises and pictorial delights, starting with a solo bass borne up by the orchestra to heaven, there to be greeted by a gleefully fugal chorus. Elsewhere there is a delicious soprano aria with parts for recorders and strings with strategically placed pizzicatos, and a ship-at-sea simile aria for tenor that could have come straight out of an opera, its wave-tossed passagework navigated with sure hand by Raphael Höhn. Charming, imaginative – Telemann never lets you down. |
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