Christoph Prégardien (tenor); Le Concert Lorrain/Stephan Schultz
Etcetera KTC1704 53:28 mins
Bach was inspired by the virtuosity of his musicians during his time at as Cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Between 1725 and 1727, one singer in particular, the bass Johann Christoph Lipsius, was a focus of his creative attentions, with his two virtuoso solo cantatas for bass dating from this time, together with the St Matthew Passion and its substantial sections written for bass.
Christoph Prégardien, an elegant lieder singer and a distinguished Bach Evangelist, makes the switch here from his usual high lyric tenor to bass-baritone. This shift in tessitura, but not in timbre, feels uncomfortable. In ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen’, the singing is missing the darker colouring of a true bass and, in Bach’s melismatic passages, Prégardien lacks fulness of tone. His voice’s natural lyricism and expressive range are brought into better focus in ‘Ich habe genug’, capturing the prophet Simeon’s poignant sense of fulfilment on encountering the infant Christ.
Bach’s settings are technically demanding, as well as requiring an intense intellectual engagement from the performers to bring out the spiritual import of the texts. ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab’ equates the journey of life with all its sufferings to a ship’s voyage, and Bach’s orchestration evokes undulating waters and stormy emotions from anguish to acceptance. This sense of life’s drama unfolding before us eludes Le Concert Lorrain, whose playing remains breezy and genial throughout this live recording, a broad wash of lovely sound, locked in an unwavering allegretto and lacking in nuances of light and shade.
