What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is that rarest of rare things: a genuine world-premiere recording of a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach appropriately entitled Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' (All with Got and Nothing Without). A single-movement cantata setting of a birthday ode for Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar composed in 1713, the work was discovered in the collection of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in June 2005. Searching for source documentation of German music during the Baroque period, musicologist Michael Maul found the anonymous manuscript and immediately identified Bach's characteristically elegant soprano clef sign. In this recording by soprano
Elin Manahan Thomas, violinists Alison Bury and
Kati Debretzeni, violist Katherine McGillivray, cellist
Alison McGillivray, organist Silas John Standage, and lutinist
David Miller, Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' receives a deeply affectionate, profoundly dedicated, and wonderfully musical performance.
However, because the work lasts only 12:20 and there were no other Bach premieres to fill up the disc, the remainder of the program consists of 10 movements drawn from various Bach sacred cantatas performed by the
Monteverdi Choir, the
English Baroque Soloists, and a host of vocal and instrumental soloists all under the direction of
John Eliot Gardiner. Although the prospect of 10 seemingly random movements might appear daunting at first, they are in fact arranged into a kind of pastiche cantata of amazing aesthetic effectiveness. More importantly, the tender and intimate interpretations of
Gardiner and his forces make each moment of each movement astonishingly emotionally affecting. Monteverdi Productions' sound is warm and close.