La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Christmas Cantatas (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:01:39 minutes | 639 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
If there is one work that sheds light on all facets of festive music-making during the Christmas season, it is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. This music transcends the ages and radiates throughout the world – starting in Leipzig, where the six-part cantata cycle was first heard in the two main churches of St. Nikolai and St. Thomas on the festive days between 25 December 1734 and 6 January 1735.
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La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Leipzig Cantatas (Remastered) (2001/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 55:25 minutes | 587 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
The Christmas cantatas have in common the use of a church chorale as their conceptual starting point, and their intimate performing forces. In Bach’s output they constitute a kind of meditation on the meaning of the feast of Christmas.
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La Chapelle Royale, Philippe Herreweghe & Peter Kooy – Bach: Cantatas for Bass (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 52:19 minutes | 575 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
In 1991, Philippe Herreweghe and La Chapelle Royale recorded three Bach cantatas on the themes of suffering and death – death viewed as a kindly comforter. The soloist was the prodigious bass Peter Kooy, a long-standing partner of the ensemble and a key figure in it’s magnificent survey of Bach’s cantatas, motets and Passions.
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La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21 (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:04:29 minutes | 664 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Superbly constructed, the cantata “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis” is incontestably of the material endows it with an emotional cohesion and a dramatic intensity worthy of the passions and mass in B minor.
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La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Oster-Oratorium, BWV 249 (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:12:34 minutes | 748 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
This double album assembles two oratorios and three cantatas for the feasts of Easter and Ascension. Often overshadowed by the Christmas Oratorio, the two oratorios presented here rely on a form of dramaturgy absent from the cantatas; whether directly portraying the protagonists of the Passion of Christ (Easter Oratorio) or having the Evangelist narrate events, Bach draws on the music of earlier cantatas to produce two works whose beauty and coherence Philippe Herreweghe has brought out more convincingly than any other interpreter.
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La Chapelle Royale & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Trauerode, BWV 198 (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 57:35 minutes | 593 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Two odes to death and the soul’s salvation: Whatever the occasions for which they were written (a tribute to a dead queen, or a chorale cantata), the two works on this recording have one subject in common: death and the soul’s salvation. Performed in 1727 in memory of the sorely mourned Christiane Eberhardine, Queen of Poland and Electress of Saxony, the Funeral Ode BWV 198 is particularly moving in its sincerity and spiritual grandeur.
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La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – J.S. Bach: Wir danken dir, Gott (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:04:37 minutes | 675 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
To the glory of God and the Burgomaster: Bach’s appointment as director musices of the city of Leipzig in 1723 brought with it, among his other functions, the duty of providing an annual liturgical cantata specifically intended for performance during the ceremony of the opening of the session of the new Municipal Council. At least twelve such cantatas were written during the long years he spent in the pious town, of which no more than a third have survived intact. The almost martial accents of Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, the invocation of prosperity and blessing of Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille and the astonishing parodies of the third Partita for solo violin in Wir danken dir, Gott – the three cantatas on this recording – are all somewhat unabashed combinations of the glorification of God and municipal pride.
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La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe – Bach: Cantatas for Alto Solo (Remastered) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 59:16 minutes | 625 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
According to German theological tradition, which Bach knew very well, the alto voice was the very symbol of the Holy Ghost. Bach’s three solo cantatas for alto demand enormous vocal virtuosity. Their extraordinary musical variety embraces sublime consolatory lullabies, a faithful echo of an organ concerto and the dramatic qualities of an oratorio. Andreas Scholl is the featured soloist in this reissue, backed by Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent.
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