Bach for Easter with Robert Shaw

To mark Easter this year, we have the Robert Shaw Chorale's performance of Bach's profound Cantata Christ lag in Todensbaden (Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death), BWV 4.

The composition itself is an early one by the composer, dating from 1707 when he was in Mühlhausen. It is believed that he wrote the piece for an Easter performance that year.

The work is considered a "chorale cantata," a form that is generally based on a hymn tune, in this case Martin Luther's work of the same name published in 1524. For Bach, this chorale style would be succeeded by the recitative and aria format he would soon begin to use.

The Easter Cantata that is known to us today is a version that Bach performed in 1724 and 1725 at services in the Thomaskirche Leipzig.

Robert Shaw

This excellent performance dates from 1946. It was recorded in New York's Town Hall, I believe during the same sessions as the Cantata BWV 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, a Voice Calls Us, also known as Sleepers Awake).

The performers are listed on the cover as the RCA Victor Chorale and Orchestra, but the choral group is of course the Robert Shaw Chorale. Although some movements are designated as "duet" or "aria" as well as "chorale," in this performance Shaw allots all sections to the chorus.

The contemporary reviews I have found were generally positive. Here is the American Record Guide: "That Mr. Shaw's Chorale makes a fine and impressive sound is certainly no news, and we have come to expect clarity in their singing of contrapuntal passages. This we certainly get in the opening chorus, though somewhat to the detriment of the orchestra. If the conductor has not probed the depths of the mystery expressed in the first section he gives the hallelujahs with proper spirit and sweep."

LINK

Bach Cantatas with Edith Mathis and Karl Richter

This post is a small tribute to a fine singer who passed away recently, with too little notice.

Edith Mathis (1938-2025), was a Swiss soprano who surely was one of the most admired artists in the second half of the 20th century.

Edith Mathis

As Norman Lebrecht wrote the other day, "There has been a muted response to the death this week of the eminent soprano Edith Mathis, Mozart star of the Karajan years at the Vienna Opera and, later on, one of the most exquisite Lieder singers of record. Never as famous as Schwarzkopf or Christa Ludwig, Mathis shunned flamboyance and focused on the musical and emotional core of a song. She was deeply, if not loudly, loved."

Lebrecht quotes Jürgen Kesting's assessment in the Frankfurter Allgemeine: "The voice of Edith Mathis, born in Lucerne, was a gift to lovers of what is lyrical and quiet in the world of music and, to put it paradoxically, to music lovers who think with their hearts. The seraphic beauty of her singing was the sensual manifestation of the spiritual."

Anna Reynolds

With this in mind, it may be appropriate to post one of Mathis' Bach recordings. Here she is heard in duet with contralto Anna Reynolds in the Cantata Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn (Thou God indeed and Son of David), BWV 23. This is the extent of Mathis' involvement in this 1973-74 set, but it is of interest otherwise, of course.

Karl Richter

Let me quote Stereo Review's Stoddard Lincoln on the disc: "Karl Richter is well known as a Bach specialist through his many recordings and concerts with the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra. Making no attempt to use old instruments or any authentic performance practice, he elicits for Deutsche Grammophon a sound that is thoroughly modern. He uses the best soloists he can find, and they often turn out to be top singers of opera and lieder rather than Baroque specialists. Purists may cavil at this, but the general listener can only rejoice in the results. The choral and orchestral sound is sumptuous, and the individual lines, while not articulated in the Baroque manner, are clean and beautifully projected. The solo singing, for the most part, is superb. Edith Mathis is a joy."

Peter Schreier

Lincoln also praised tenor Kurt Equiluz, apparently confusing him with the excellent Peter Schreier, who is the tenor soloist in both cantatas.

Despite Lincoln's encomium, conductor Karl Richter very much divided opinion among critics. Here's Andrew Porter in High Fidelity: "Du wahrer Gott is a magnificent work that Bach composed, it seems, to demonstrate resourcefulness and mastery, when applying for the Leipzig job. But Richter trudges through it: his textures are thick and heavy. And so they are in Bisher habt ihr nichts gebelen, where his slow tempo makes the alto aria seem interminable, and the lilting 12/8 of the tenor aria (in a major key, after three arias in the minor) has no spring."

What one critic thinks is ponderous, another may consider monumental. Richter was an organist, and it is impossible to hear these performances without being reminded of that fact. Famous in his time - he was to live for just a few more years - even as these recordings were being released, his style was seemingly being eclipsed by the cantata recordings of Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt that were being issued by DG Archiv's rival Telefunken Das Alte Werk. They were a harbinger of the historically informed performance practices that are now prevalent.

None of this gainsays the artistry displayed by Edith Mathis and all the singers and instrumentalists on this fine disc.

The download includes, as usual, full scans, including the texts and translations bound into the gatefold cover, along with the reviews cited above.

LINK

Robert Shaw Conducts Bach Cantatas

The young conductor Robert Shaw started recording the music of J.S. Bach soon after he began his association with the Victor company. His first effort was a set of arias with Marian Anderson in June 1946; soon thereafter he turned to Bach's Cantata BWV 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, a voice calls us, generally called Sleepers, awake! in English), one of the composer's best-known choral works.

Today's transfer comes from an early LP that coupled BWV 140 with Shaw's 1949 recording of the equally compelling but less recognized Cantata BWV 131 Aus der Tiefe (Out of the depths). 

Both these compositions are church cantatas, setting sacred texts. Aus der Tiefe is a very early example of Bach's work in the form, written in 1707 when he was resident in Mühlhausen. Wachet auf comes from 1731, when he was in Leipzig.

Robert Shaw

Bach structured the works to intersperse variations on a hymn tune with contrasting passages. In Wachet auf, the chorale is based on a Lutheran hymn published by Philipp Nicolai in 1599. The fourth movement is a chorale prelude that was later published as one of the Schübler Chorales for organ, achieving independent renown. (I've appended two of these to the post as a bonus - see below.)

In BWV 140 the chorales are separated by recitatives and arias from an unknown source or sources that depict a wedding of the soul and Jesus. In the fourth movement, the bass sings, "Ich habe mich mit dir / Von Ewigkeit vertraut" ("I have betrothed myself to you from eternity to eternity").

BWV 131 does not include recitatives. The text is based on Psalm 130 and also incorporates the words of a chorale, derived from "Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut" by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt.

Shaw's recordings are among the earliest of these works; BWV 131 was a first recording. The more popular BWV 140 had two earlier issues. As you might expect, stylistically Shaw's readings have been surpassed. Even so, his use of relatively small forces pointed to the future.

Paul Matthen

The vocal soloists are variable. Bass Paul Matthen is excellent in both works, as is tenor William Hess in Aus der Tiefe. Soprano Suzanne Freil is good in Wachet auf, but tenor Roy Russell is shaky in his brief recitative.

Shaw employed some of the best instrumentalists for these works. Oboist Robert Bloom and violinist Joseph Fuchs can be heard in both cantatas. The continuo in BWV 131 was provided by harpsichordist Sylvia Marlowe and cellist Bernard Greenhouse.

Joseph Fuchs and Robert Bloom

The sound in BWV 131, from 1949 and the Manhattan Center, was better than BWV 140, from three years earlier and Town Hall, but both are more than acceptable. 

Unlike the LP, the download is tracked and includes texts and translations, along with several reviews. The recordings were remastered from Internet Archive. 

LINK to Bach cantatas

Two Chorale Preludes

As a bonus I've added the organ chorale prelude Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV 645 along with the brief prelude BWV 646 Wo soll ich fliehen hin, in 1944 performances by Carl Weinrich, who recorded with Shaw. You can hear him in the recent post of favorite hymns from the Shaw Chorale.

LINK to chorale preludes