Outil de traduction (Très approximatif)
Translator tool (Very approximate)
Reviewer:
Peter Quantrill
This is
Gardiner’s second recording of the Christmas Cantata No 151, which dates from
Bach’s golden period of cantata composition, two years after the Magnificat:
even more exquisitely refined and restfully possessed of consoling authority
than his account from the 2000 Cantata Pilgrimage (12/06). Exemplified by the
unselfconscious innocence of Angela Hicks in the cantata’s long opening aria,
Gardiner has more and more tended to cast and coach singers in a vein of
expression peeled of traditionally soloistic or assertive methods of delivery:
here, the text is everything. With the E flat version of the Magnificat,
the tension is turned up over its more familiar D major cousin as well as the
pitch, like retuning a fiddle, though the choral work is remarkably relaxed in
what amounts to 10 of the trickiest minutes in Bach’s entire output. The
soloists are all appreciably youthful in tone, especially alto Eleanor Minney
(‘Et exultavit’) and soprano Hannah Morrison (‘Quia respexit’). Reginald Mobley
and Hugo Hymas combine to an especially affecting degree in ‘Et misericordia’.
Even if the members of the
Monteverdi Choir aren’t singing off the book, as they and other vocal ensembles
have done in recent years, they sound liberated from the score. The fugues are
tight without being regimented; indeed, Gardiner’s old recording sounds a little
stiff by comparison, even if it set a standard at the time which this new
recording supersedes. The alien, harmonically disconcerting nature of the four
interpolated movements is emphasised by placing them in a different, more
distant perspective. The chorus is also slightly recessed in the parody F major
Mass, the better to uncover busy instrumental detail such as a bounding pair of
horns and lovely obbligato contributions from violinist Kati Debretzeni and
oboist Rachel Chaplin.
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