While beautifully remastered, there’s a disillusioned air to proceedings and it is Karl Richter’s second recording – after a pedestrian, ‘work-in-progress’ attempt for Das Alte Werk in 1955 – that heralds the brave new world. The most memorable feature is a young Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on the kind of form which earmarked him for posterity in the famous St Matthew for Richter a few months earlier. Such is the case in Kurt Thomas’s second recording (with the Leipzig Thomaners) from 1958. One might long for perspicacious readings from the 1950s and 1960s by the likes of Hans Grischkat, Karl Ristenpart, Ferdinand Grossmann, Fritz Lehmann, Kurt Thomas and Karl Richter – some of which are available – but few constitute much more than a repository of exceptional individual movements. If selected recordings of the St Matthew Passion from this period are more durable for their insightful dramatic and poetic judgement, fewer revelations can be found in post-war Oratorios. Older versions often seem undisciplined and texturally aleatoric by today’s standards. Yuletide Yoreįrom 1950 – the date of the first complete commercial recording – the release of Christmas Oratorios has been remarkably steady. Appreciating the Evangelist’s kaleidoscopic role allows Bach’s extraordinarily coherent treatment of chorus, recitative and aria, arioso and chorale to be further illuminated. How best can the performer pace the narrative of the complete Oratorio in a story which lacks the urgency and action propelled by protagonists – the likes of Jesus, Peter, Pilate and the crowd in the Passions – while retaining the discrete contemplative world of each of the six ‘tableaux’ or cantatas? The most successful interpreters are those who identify how Bach links each cantata or ‘scene’ through the Evangelist’s quietly influential role: often he is quite directorial – exercising not merely reportage but guiding us personally through the events of Christ’s birth to the Epiphany. Whereas the shorter Easter and Ascension Oratorios are for specific occasions, this work suggests closer links to the Lutheran historia or Passion we can observe several similarities to the St John and St Matthew Passions, such as the binding role of the Evangelist, the selective and common thread of topical chorales and the prominence of biblical gospel text. Oratorio in the dramatic Handelian vein also encourages us to view this work on its own terms. One such example is the great cradle aria, ‘Schlafe, mein Liebster’, where composer and librettist (probably Bach’s prime collaborator, Picander) produce an affectionate and telling makeover sourced from an older secular cantata (BWV213) – the tempting wiles of the allegorical ‘Pleasure’ luring Hercules towards a rather different concept of sleep, here becoming a vision of haloed slumber fit for the kingly child. This substantial festival work, like the Mass, draws liberally on pieces composed for previous occasions, Bach typically recycling old material with freshness and vibrancy to suit the new context. If the Mass in B minor is a compilation on the loftiest conceptual level – honed and crafted as the zenith of Bach’s creative life – then the Christmas Oratorio stands as a compilation of a quite different kind, a practical harvesting of six specific cantatas to be performed on the feast days of Christmas 1734 and the New Year.
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