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Reviewer:
Jonathan Freeman-Attwood The temptation for Masaaki Suzuki to regard the four short Masses as a mopping-up exercise after the conclusion of his 20-year traversal of the complete cantatas would be understandable. History might encourage such a view since scholars until recently saw these four ‘parody’ Masses – of which the G major and minor works appeared as Vol 1 last year (9/15) – as poor relations to their original cantata sources. Suzuki, fortunately, resists all such suggestions.
Alongside Philippe Herreweghe and Raphaël Pichon’s exceptional versions, this reading reaffirms the truism that, however pragmatic, Bach was never glib. These adaptations provide insights into both the composer’s astute selection policy of movements, those he valued enough to recast, and the skill with which he transformed a German rhetorical world seamlessly into convincing and relatively ritualised Latin Mass settings. It requires, though, a good deal of amnesia for seasoned Bachians to forget the striking dialogue of Christ and his disciples in BWV68 (‘Halt im Gedächtnis’), now almost unbelievably redeployed to accentuate the contrasting sentiments of the Gloria in the A major Mass.
The Bach Collegium Japan alight on the aesthetic of the new liturgical context with supreme eloquence in both of these works. Suzuki judges the pacing with quiet authority, promoting a generous phraseology where voices and instruments cohabit with a glorious quasi-nonchalance.
The F major Kyrie – often over-pointed in its stilo antico provenance or tiringly luminous – is wonderfully comfortable in its skin, with freely evolving articulation and firm, directed bass-lines.
The solos, too, patiently narrate the text through the artful and reliable Peter Kooij 8in the ‘Domine Deus’ of the same work and most memorably in the centrepiece of the A major Mass, the ‘Qui tollis’. Here, with two flutes in as ravishing and tender a supplication as you’ll ever hear, Hana BlaΩíková reveals herself to be among the finest of modern-day Bachians, gleaming and otherworldly.
Especially in his final two
decades in Leipzig, Bach drew increasingly on the musical resources of his
forebears and contemporaries, though his knowledge of Peranda’s Mass in A
derives from his years in Weimar. Such is the competence of the contrapuntal
work, it is no wonder the ever-receptive Bach copied out the parts. BCJ’s
performance is slightly sullied by some intermittent choral flatness. I may
jettison this work on my iPod but not the two Masses, which are among the finest
recorded. |
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