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richard barrett
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« on: 17:30:11, 15-01-2008 » |
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So, welcome to a new thread: at the end of the old OVPP thread I was thinking it might be interesting to move on to recordings/performances of Bach's "choral" music with OVPP and their relative convincingness (in various senses).
As I said somewhere on that thread, I haven't surveyed the available recordings with any kind of exhaustiveness. Some of Rifkin's Bach Ensemble discs seem to take flight, others not. I wasn't at all convinced by McCreesh's St Matthew Passion on account of the "choir" never really cohering, or by Junghänel's seemingly taking the OVPP setting as a cue to notch tempi up. I haven't heard anything from Kuijken's recent forays yet.
One thing (oops, straying off topic again already) which has struck me about Gardiner's ongoing series of releases of live (4VPP) cantatas is that performing each piece as a whole (rather than the piecemeal recording approach which Harnoncourt/Leonhardt and Koopman employ), and together with other cantatas written for the same occasion in different years, is a rather enlightening way to do things, emphasising the sense of "spiritual drama" which underlies the pieces and without which they often tend to lack unity and depth.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #1 on: 00:18:49, 16-01-2008 » |
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Now that the original thread has come back to life, maybe this one can be ditched.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #2 on: 08:23:10, 16-01-2008 » |
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I tell you what, though....
... Handel is better than Bach.
I'll get me coat...
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Baz
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« Reply #3 on: 08:32:53, 16-01-2008 » |
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I tell you what, though....
... Handel is better than Bach.
I'll get me coat...
It must be freezing in Moscow - so don't forget your tin hat too! Baz  |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #4 on: 08:35:39, 16-01-2008 » |
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A nice ear-covering ushanka is ideal for Moscow (temp back to 0C today from last week's -17C) - but you'd want a Pickelhauber (or a private air-raid shelter) in the OVPP thread  |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #5 on: 09:00:25, 16-01-2008 » |
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I tell you what, though....
... Handel is better than Bach.
Well of course he is, he wrote for proper CHOIRS, didn't he, and real Eye-talian opera singers, not some damn quartet of university students... he knew what we Brits really wanted.  |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #6 on: 09:23:49, 16-01-2008 » |
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he wrote for proper CHOIRS, didn't he, and real Eye-talian opera singers, not some damn quartet of university students... he knew what we Brits really wanted.
For youuuuuuu!  |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #7 on: 09:28:45, 16-01-2008 » |
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Yeah, but you ain't 'alf got a lot of people to do some 'splainin' to, matey   The Nottingham Bach Choir  The East Sussex Bach Choir  The Birmingham Bach Choir  The Ottawa Bach Choir  The Bristol Bach Choir  The Newcastle Upon Tyne Bach Choir |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #8 on: 12:50:03, 16-01-2008 » |
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Reiner, you have of course hit upon the very problem... Richard, you appear to have an unrealistic idea of the extent of my pectoral development...  |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #9 on: 23:52:17, 06-02-2008 » |
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Anyway.
I've now listened a couple of times to vol.4 of the Kuijken series. Unexpectedly it was the chorales I found most appealing, although some of the singing is quite ropey. The intrumental balance is also very strange - you'd think that there's be a gain in transparency from the disappearance of double basses and generally rather small string ensemble, but the recorders in the first and last movements of BWV 65 (Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen) are close to inaudible.
The recent Cantus Cölln recording of JSB's four Missae breves though is wonderful.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #10 on: 23:54:08, 06-02-2008 » |
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The recent Cantus Cölln recording of JSB's four Missae breves though is wonderful.
Yes, we liked that one too. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #11 on: 00:12:54, 07-02-2008 » |
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I'm still not sure if Kuijken has quite twigged to the point that what one really needs here is ensemble singers singing the solos, not soloists (in the sense of performers who normally sing solo, not just in the sense of single voices) singing the ensembles. That has a profound effect on the mood of the arias of course - they become the chamber music that Bach wrote, not the accompanied solos singers sometimes seem to want them to be. (IMESHO) Here is some very non-ropey singing indeed from volume 5. |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #12 on: 04:53:41, 07-02-2008 » |
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but the recorders in the first and last movements of BWV 65 (Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen) are close to inaudible.
Well, that's obviously wrong, then |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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richard barrett
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« Reply #13 on: 13:48:56, 12-03-2008 » |
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Here is a review of the John Butt Matthew Passion in Classics Today by David Vernier, who appears to claim to be able retrospectively to read JS Bach's mind.
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #14 on: 14:06:56, 12-03-2008 » |
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Now why did I bother even skimming that one? |
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