Chorale Cantatas 1

Photo: Stefanie Kunde
 

You’ve been working with Chorus Musicus Köln and Das Neue Orchester on recording Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete chorale cantatas for about ten years. What do you find so fascinating about this second Leipzig annual cycle of cantatas?

I developed a great affinity and passion for the chorale, the Protestant hymn – and for the Bach chorale in particular – in my earliest youth. These homophonic settings, which don’t appear to be all that complicated, were played at my parents’ house early on. So it was the obvious thing for me to take an interest in the chorale cantata cycle, which after all is the most complete of Bach’s cantata cycles to have come down to us and which has always fascinated me by its incredible diversity.

As far as performance practice is concerned, you have always placed a strong emphasis on the organ in the basso continuo in your recordings. What motivated you to do that?

Johann Sebastian Bach was by nature and by training a keyboard player, that is, an organist, first and foremost. So in my view the organ should play a much more central role in his music than has been the case in many concerts and recordings so far. It’s Bach’s main instrument, the centre of the bass line.

At the 2024 Bachfest, you’ll be performing the first four cantatas from Bach’s annual cycle of chorale cantatas. What do these pieces have in common and how do they differ from one another?

It’s an interesting and very good idea to perform this cantata cycle in chronological order at the Bachfest. The remarkable thing about the first four cantatas is that the chorale melody »migrates« through all the voices in the opening choruses. In the first cantata (BWV 20), it’s in the soprano, in the second (BWV 2) in the alto, in the third cantata (BWV 7) it migrates to the tenor and finally, in the fourth (BWV 135), it’s in the bass. But even in terms of their form and scoring these first four cantatas show great diversity. From the first, two-part cantata, »O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort« (»O Eternity, You Thunder-word«) to the almost intimate, fourth cantata »Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder« (»Ah Lord, do not rebuke me«), Bach unfolds his art like a kaleidoscope.