The Bach Cantata Tour of conductor
John Eliot Gardiner and his
Monteverdi Choir and
English Baroque Soloists began on Christmas Day 1999 and continued through the year 2000. Its intent was to perform all of Bach's cantatas in their proper places in the liturgical year, at various musically significant locations around Europe. When multiple cantatas for a specific liturgical event survive, the group performed all of them at the concert and was a rich source of insights. Accompanied by excerpts from
Gardiner's tour diaries in the handsomely designed booklets, the recordings of the concerts (enhanced only lightly with material from recorded rehearsals) capture the immediacy of live performances; they have a few blemishes and a lot of high points. The set has a cumulative impact, but collecting the whole thing is an expensive proposition. This double disc, capturing performances from Berlin's Gethsemanekirche from New Year's Day and January 2, 2000 (the beginning of the new millennium, if you agree to that way of counting it), may not be the best place to start sampling. The problem is the church's acoustics.
Gardiner was asked about them by German interviewers and dutifully reports his retort that Berlin isn't exactly overflowing with suitable churches, and that anyway he liked the church's history of protest (it played a key role at the time of the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic and continues to host peace activism). The engineers do very well, considering; the soloists are easy to hear and understand. But the overall sound is muddy. Even so, the excitement of the millennium-opening concert comes through well, and the remarkable set of soloists
Gardiner assembled for the event was in fine form. The standout is tenor
James Gilchrist, in the gloriously long aria "Woferne du die edlen Frieden" (track 11), from the Cantata No. 41, Jesu, nun sei gepreiset, BWV 41.
Gardiner's booklet notes are almost reason enough to purchase these discs in themselves, and his warm, humanistic interpretations in print are perfect counterparts to his music-making. Recommended, although not the first release to buy from this series.