Bach: A Life in Music - Köthen
Les Arts Florissants continue their series of exploring Bach’s music, by location, with this volume 3 release featuring Durchlauchtster Leopold BWV 173a alongside instrumental works and two keyboard works. The keyboard contribution comes with their collaboration with Benjamin Alard who performs on clavichord and harpsichord. He is not, however, the soloist in the concerto, instead the fifth Brandenburg Concerto, BWV 1050’s keyboard part is led by Béatrice Martin alongside Emmanuel Resche-Caserta (violin) and Serge Saitta (flute). The opening work, the other major instrumental number, is the second orchestral suite, BWV 1067, featuring Gabrielle Rubio on flute. Miriam Allan and Edward Grint are the two vocal soloists in the secular cantata.
The idea of packaging these works together by city is novel, perhaps, but at the end of the day, the assembled pieces make for odd bedfellows. And many Bach lovers are already going to have recordings of BWV 1050 and 1067.
Martin and Rubio both are able soloists in the concerto and suite but I found no real appreciable advantage in these performances to what has already been burned to disc.
Alard’s contributions make up four and a half minutes on the disc. They seem like afterthoughts that didn’t get included in his own series of Bach recordings on the same label. There’s some interest, perhaps, in the eighth track, the alternative early version of BWV 846, which is the piece played upon the clavichord (at a fast pace, taking a 1:09).
This leaves us the cantata in celebration of Prince Leopold. Allan’s voice puts me off immediately in the first track, coming across as far too operatic in style (read: loves of vibrato rejoice!). The stereo presentation of the ensemble, however, is well-done, I think, from a recording standpoint. Grint’s voice too utilizes vibrato, but I find his style far more appropriate for this repertoire.
I revisited Suzuki’s performance from 2012 of this same cantata; the sound in this LAF performance, as noted, is superior. The soprano in the Japanese production too utilizes a healthy dose of vibrato, but I found her tone to be far more agreeable despite Allan’s diction coming across more clearly. I’d wager the best recording of this work may just be Koopman’s from the ninth volume of his cantata cycle.
This album may well be of interest to those fans of Christie’s Les Arts Florissants. Under the direction of Paul Agnew and Resche-Caserta, these works by Bach are respectfully played but I am not convinced the performances rival those that have come before. The addition of two selections from the first book of the well-tempered clavier seem frivolously added and the cantata, while well-captured by Harmonia Mundi’s engineers, in my view suffers from a soprano whose voice I just didn’t enjoy.
