Christoph Prégardien reviews
Cantatas for Baritone: JS Bach • Telemann
Christoph Prégardien; Vox Orchestra/Lorenzo Ghirlanda (Deutches Harmonia Mundi)
Auf Flügeln Des Gesanges: Romantic Songs and Transcriptions
Christoph Prégardien & Cyprien Katsaris (Challenge Classics)
Bach: St Matthew Passion
It is just over 30 years since Nikolaus Harnoncourt made his first recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. I can remember listening with astonishment and joy to the lively dance-like character of the opening chorus, a far cry from any tempo I had grown up with. Now Harnoncourt takes it more briskly, knocking almost three-quarters of a minute off the earlier recording – and it evinced no astonishment at all, such has been the evolution in Baroque music performance over the past quarter-century and more.