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Reviewer: George
Chien
You may
have heard it said that you just can’t get too much of Bach. I’m sure I must
have made that claim at one time or another, but it’s demonstrably not true,
and this disc will help to prove it. The most recent Bach discovery, to the
best of my knowledge, was the “Aria soprano solo e ritornello,” Alles mit
Gott und nichts ohm’ ihn, here recorded. Alles mit Gott is unlike any other
Bach work—an accompanied strophic aria with 12 strophes. Each strophe or
verse is set to the same music, about four minutes long, so the whole takes
somewhere between three-quarters and an hour to perform. Shortly after its
discovery, Carolyn Sampson and Masaaki Suzuki recorded it in its entirety. I
am sure that some aficionados relished its completeness, but other
listeners, yours truly included, found the unvarying repetition tedious.
Lisa Larsson and Ton Koopman recorded only four verses—1, 4, 8, and 12—which
seemed about right, and Dorothee Mields follows suit on the present
recording. Thus, the abridged aria becomes a satisfactory component of a
most rewarding disc. Mields is in fine voice throughout this program. She
doesn’t match Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s intensity in BWV 199, but who does?
She sings with conviction and considerable tonal beauty—and discretion. She
knows how much of Alles mit Gott her listeners can take. This is a lovely
disc, well recommended.
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