Nicholas Kenyon 

JS Bach: Ich elender Mensch, Leipzig Cantatas review – dance and poise

Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent make Bach's glorious cantatas dance, writes Nicholas Kenyon
  
  


Bach's cantatas include some of the most astonishing, visionary music in existence, and one marvels at the dedication with which he turned out one a week in his early Leipzig years. Philippe Herreweghe, who was involved in the great Harnoncourt/Leonhardt series in the 1970s, has developed a light, crisp, agile style with his Collegium Vocale Gent. Neither drivingly rhythmic like John Eliot Gardiner's cycle, nor thin like some of the one-to-a-part versions, it is deftly poised and dancing: try Dorothee Mields in the hypnotically beautiful soprano aria Es ist und bleibt from Cantata 44, or the buoyant and elaborate chorus which unusually ends Cantata 109. A tiny bonus is Komm, Jesu komm by Johann Schelle, showing the simple roots from which Bach grew.

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*