COMPOSERS: Bruhns,Buxtehude,JC Bach,Rosenmáller,Schátz,Tunder & Weckmann
LABELS: Sony
ALBUM TITLE: Collection: Cantatas for Bass
WORKS: Works by JC Bach, Bruhns, Rosenmüller, Buxtehude, Schütz, Tunder & Weckmann
PERFORMER: Harry van der Kamp (bass) Period Instrument Ensemble
CATALOGUE NO: SK 68264
This magnificent voice can grasp and hold attention throughout the whole of a generous disc devoted to a single genre. Van der Kamp has a range of well over two octaves from a full-voiced low (modern) C to a delicately restrained tone in the top register. He is helped by variety in the scoring of the ten pieces: organ and chitarrone support the Lamentations of Jeremiah which open and close the well-constructed programme; Buxtehude calls for pairs of cornetti, trumpets, violins and gambas; Schütz, in the familiar Fili mi, Absalon, uses the unforgettable sonority of four trombones. The ad hoc group of instrumentalists is first-rate – special mention for Lucy van Dael’s flashing figurations around the voice in a lament by JC Bach.
These pieces integrate exuberant Italian expressiveness with the structural coherence of Protestant German composers: although they are sectional – motets rather than extended cantatas – for all their vivid word-painting, they are far more than a mere compendium of musical rhetoric.
Recorded sound is excellent, barring some momentary background thumps somewhere in the Doopsgezinde Kerk, Haarlem. George Pratt