forum

Telemann, Buxtehude, Bach: German Baroque Cantatas

All good marketing principles cast aside, Gli Angei Genève have assembled five magnificent cantatas from contrasting 17th- and 18th-century North German lineages. If one can barely absorb the extent of Telemann's substantial output, the less prolific Johaim Christoph Bach (the elder statesman of the family whom JS particularly admired) and Nicolaus Bruins remind us - as did Reinhard Goebel's pioneering "vor Bach" forays for Archiv in the 1980s - of a refined late-i 7thcentury expressive world in North Germany, which one wishes had lasted a little longer before the ubiquitous Italian monopoly.

Johaim Christoph Bach's steamy lament Ach, class ich Wassers is now a celebrated concert work for countertenors, but often clammily accompanied and over-infused with pure operatic gesture. Projection comes in many shapes and forms and the suggestive, softgrained rhetorical inferences in the delectable dialogues between the irresistible Pascal Bertin and the rich five-part consort convey a potent message of deep, "jeremiad" sorrow.

Such refinement extends to the full-blooded Jesu, meines Lebens by Buxtehude, whose radiant chaconne is effectively complemented by the jubilant roulades of Jauchzet dem Herren by the short-lived Bruins. This is a magnificent, concentrated and virtuoso piece for solo tenor, sung here passionately by Jan Kobow.

Director Stephan MacLeod's Ich babe genug (BWV82) is a thoughtful if fairly uneventful addition to the catalogue. Telemann's Funeral Cantata is perhaps the greatest surprise for its remarkably affecting text-setting, lightness of touch in its scoring and supreme attention to

A magnificent, concentrated and virtuoso piece for solo tenor, sung here passionately by Jan Kobow' detail, not unlike Bach's own Trauer Ode, in colorific approach if not idiom. It is another wonderful work and Gli Angeli's grateful account reaches the heights in the concluding chorus (is this and the preceding soprano aria as Bachian as Telemann gets?) with that master of the oboe, Marcel Ponseele, as beguiling as ever.

Jonathan Freeman-Attwood