GERMAN 17TH-CENTURY CHURCH MUSIC • Robin Blaze (ct); Parley of Instruments • HELIOS 55230 (74:10 Text and Translation)

Music of Schütz, Bernhard, Rosenmüller, Buxtehude, Geist, H. Bach, J. Christoph Bach, J. M. BACH, KRIEGER, HOFFMANN

Originally issued as CDA 67079, this was not originally reviewed here. Oddly, Peter Holman, who played chamber organ in the ensemble and wrote the notes, is no longer billed as director. Since this was Robin Blaze’s first solo recording, it deserved some attention. The program includes some important works, such as Schütz’s Erbarm dich mein (SWV 447); Buxtehude’s most popular cantata, Jubilate Domino (BuxWV 64), as well as his Jesu, meine Freud und Lust (BuxWV 59); and Melchior Hoffmann’s Schlage doch, better known as listed in the Bach Werke Verzeichnis as Cantata No. 53. (Hoffmann is now credited with Cantata No. 189 as well.) The Bach family members include Sebastian’s great-uncle Heinrich (1615–92) and Heinrich’s two sons, Johann Christoph (1642–1703) and Johann Michael (1648–94). One of Rosenmüller’s pieces and both of Heinrich Bach’s are sonatas, while Blaze sings the other 10 works. The oddest of the latter works is Rosenmüller’s Christum ducem, a hymn for Passiontide by St. Bonaventure that ends each strophe with the first line of a different Latin hymn. It would seem to have little use in Lutheran Leipzig, as Holman notes.

The cantata credited here to Hoffmann is one of six entries in the BWV that are no longer credited to J. S. Bach, as colleague George Chien noted (28:4). Neither Teldec nor Hänssler have included them in their sets of Bach cantatas (Teldec omitted another five cantatas). Chien indicated at the time that he was unable to find a desired recording of BWV 142, Uns ist ein Kind geboren, but he overlooked Kurt Redel’s fine version coupled with the Magnificat on Philips 835737, issued at Christmas 1964 with such sterling soloists as Jurinac, Jareska, Altmeyer, and Rehfuss. It was followed two years later by another version under Heinz Markus Göttsche on Da Camera 94015 and Oryx 112. Diethelm Kaufmann also recorded the work on a Spirella CD in 2000, adding Kuhnau’s setting of the same text for good measure. (So the catalog indicates; some sources claim that Bach simply borrowed Kuhnau’s cantata for use in Leipzig.) Of the six unauthentic works, the real rarities were BWV 15, Denn du wirst meine Seele, and BWV 141, Das ist je gewisslich wahr, which had never been recorded before the Helbich disc that Chien reviewed.

The present program is well balanced, a series of moderately short pieces putting the great Jubilate Domino at the center and the instrumental pieces at intervals during the program. The central piece is executed with a light and flexible delivery, placing Blaze in the company of the many leading countertenors who have essayed the work. It’s fairly remarkable that Blaze can sustain the interest of such a varied program that highlights only the countertenor voice. The contrast among the styles of these works is worth hearing, for 17th-century German Lutheran composers were by no means cut from the same cloth. The accompanying ensemble, as Holman admits, uses “Renaissance” violins because they are closer to instruments used in this period than Baroque instruments of the 18th century. The program is a nice mix of familiar and rare works of the period.

FANFARE: J. F. Weber