Luogo e data di registrazione		Hervormde Kerk, Bennebroek (Holland): - 5/8 Settembre 1965 (BWV 90, 161) - 31 Marzo / 1, 7/8 Aprile 1969 (BWV 89)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" | SAWT 9540-B | 1 LP - durata 40' 43" | (p) 1969 | ANA
	Edizione CD		Warner Classics | LC 04281 | 2564-69599-2 | 2 CDs - durata 146' 05" | (c) 2008 | ADD
	Cover		Klosterkirche Veresheim. Kuppelfresko über der Orgelempore von Martin Knoller (1725-1804), "Jesus treibt die Händler aus dem Tempel" (Ausschnitt)
	Note		-

The cantata in the broadest sense of the word - whether as the church cantata or the patrician, academic or courtly work of musical homage and festivity - accompanied the Arnstadt and Mühlhausen organist, the Weimar chamber musician and court organist, the Köthen conductor and finally the Leipzig cantor of St. Thomas’-Bach-all through his creative life, although with fluctuating intensity, with interruptions and vacillations that still are problems to musicological research down to this very day. The earliest preserved cantata (“Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Hölle lassen”) probably dates, if it really is by Bach, from the Arnstadt period (1704) and is still completely under the spell of North and Central German traditions. In the works of his Mühlhausen years (1707-08) - psalm cantatas, festive music for the changing of the council and a funeral work (the “Actus tragicus”) - we sense for the first time something of what raises Bach as a cantata composer so much higher than all his contemporaries: the ability to analyse even the most feeble text with regard to its form and content, to grasp its theological significance and to interpret it out of its very spiritual centre in musical “speech” that is infinitely subtle and infinitely powerful in effect. In Weimar (1708-17) new duties pushed the cantata right into the background to begin with. It was not until the Duke commissioned him to write “new pieces monthly” for the court services that Bach once more turned to the cantata during the years 1714-16, on texts written by Erdmann Neumeister and Salomo Franck. Barely thirty cantatas can be ascribed to these two years with a reasonable degree of certainty. It is most remarkable that, on the other and no courtly funeral music has been preserved from the entire Weimar period, although there must have been a considerable demand for such works. It is conceivable that many a lost work, supplied with a new text by Bach himself, lives on among the Weimar church cantatas. In the years Bach spent at Köthen (1717-23), on the other hand, it is the composition of works for courtly occasions of homage and festivity that come to the fore, entirely in keeping with Bach’s duties as Court Conductor. It is only during the last few months he spent at Köthen that we find him composing a series of church cantatas once again, and these were already intended for Leipzig. It was in Leipzig that the majority of the great church cantatas came into being, all of them - according to the most recent research - during his first few years of office at Leipzig and comprising between three and a maximum of five complete series for all the Sundays and feast days of the ecclesiastical year. But just as suddenly as it began, this amazing creative flow, in which this magnificent series of cantatas arose, appears to have ended again. It is possible that Bach’s regular composition of cantatas stopped as early as 1726; from 1729 at the latest it is evident that other tasks largely absorbed his creative energy, particularly the direction of the students’ Collegium Musicum with its perpetual demand for fashionable instrumental music. More than 50 cantatas for courtly and civic occasions have indeed been recorded from later years, but considered over a period of 24 years and compared with the productivity of his first years in Leipzig they do not amount to very much. We are left with the picture of an enigmatic silence in a sphere which has ever counted as the central category in Bach’s creative output. But we only need cast a superficial glance at the more than 200 of the master’s cantatas that have come down to us in order to see that this conception of their position in Bach’s total output is fully justified. Bach has investigated their texts with regard to both their meaning and their wording with incomparable penetration, piercing intellect and unshakeable faith, whether they are passages from the Bible, hymns, sacred poems by his contemporaries or sacredly trimmed poetry for courtly occasions. He has transformed and interpreted these texts through his music with incomparable powers of invention and formation, he has revealed their essence and, at the same time, translated the imagery and emotional content of each of their ideas into musical images and emotions. The perfect blending of word and note, the combination of idea synthesis and depiction of each detail of the text, the joint effect of the baroque magnificence of the musical forms and the highly differentiated attention to detail, the skillful balance between contrapuntal, melodic and harmonic means in the service of the word and, not least, the inexhaustible fertility and greatness of a musical imagination that is able to create from the most feeble ‘occasional’ text a world of musical characters - all this is what raises the cantata composer Bach so much higher than his own and every other age and their historically determined character, and imparts a lasting quality to his works. It is not their texts alone and not their music alone that makes them immortal - it is the combination of word and note into a higher unit, into a new significance that first imparts to them the power of survival and makes them what they are above all else: perfect works of art. Was soll ich aus dir machen, Ephraim? (BWV 89) has its origins in the first Leipzig annual cantata cycle and was composed for 24 October 1725 (twenty-second Sunday after Trinity). The anonymous text begins with a quotation from the Old Testament which hints at the Sunday Gospel reading and is then construed in a double sequence of recitative and aria. The impact of the Old Testament language inspired Bach to compose a grandiose and gloomy opening movement. This is a bass arioso of the highest rhetorical power around which oboes, strings and continuo (the horn has only a supporting function), three contrary motifs - sighs, pathos-laden broken chords and murmuring semiquavers - develop in ever new constellations. The two arias stand out from this movement on account of markedly simple instrumentation, but at the same time are designed as a contrasting pair. The alto aria (with continuo only) conjures up in D minor the terrors of the Old Testament court (not by coincidence with the aid of that already slightly archaic theme type given to the Old Covenant in BWV 106). The soprano aria, in B flat major with obbligato oboe, prepared by way of the arioso concluding phrase of the second recitative, sings of the hope in Christ's redeeming sacrifice with almost dancelike grace and a relaxed mood. The final chorus is a simple, songelike setting, although not entirely without hannonic surprises to point up the text. Es reifet euch ein schrecklich Ende (BWV 90) was composed for the tvventy-fifth Sunday after Trinity, i.e. 14 November 1723, and thus also belongs to the first Leipzig annual cantata cycle. The anonymous text concentrates on the visions of horror of the final period before the last judgement; the hope of the “chosen people” is not uttered until the second recitative and the chorale. The deadly earnestness of this text is matched by the almost gloomy composition, which with uncustomary persistence circles around D minor (the tonic) and G minor, and which in the two chief arias that dominate the work depict the text's emotions in a highly graphic fashion: the terrible end and the sinfulness of man in vehement coloraturas, chromatic runs, broken-off phrases and hurled-out declamatory motifs in the tenor’s highest range; the vision of the zealous judge of the world in grandiose war music, completely built up on signal motifs, with concertante trumpet, the symbolic instrument of warfare. The two secco recitatives are brief and unadorned, but worked out down to the last text detail both as regards declamation and harmonically. In particular the first, which contrasts God's goodness and the worlds ingratitude, displays an abundance and power of musical depiction of the text which were not customary even for Bach. The closing chorus is a song-like setting which begins in simple fashion and then increases in harmonic splendour, culminating in one of Bachs most astounding harmonic applications (D flat major inserted at the word “Stündelein") and eventually fading out on the sustained D major of “ewig bei dir sein" (join thee in eternity). Komm, du süße Todesstunde (BWV 161) is based on the raising of the widow of Nain‘s son. There is poetic scholarship in the Old Testament image of the lion slain by Samson, in whose corpse honey bees have made their nest. As in BWV 106, the recorders, often scored in parallel, play the “quiet notes,” and the opening alto aria contains the melody “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” as a solo in the organ part. The trio setting for flutes and continuo expands with the addition of the alto voice and the chorus into elaborate five-part writing. The melody of the more agitated tenor aria “Mein Verlangen” is, like that of the alto aria, developed from the song melody, without this being obvious; it presents the longing for death as a longing for resurrection. Particular care is taken over text interpretation in the accompagnato recitative: “Schlaf" (sleep) is evoked by descending lines, “auferwecken” (awake) is portrayed with lively movement, “letzter Stundenschlag” (the final hour) with the tolling of the bell for the dead (first flute) and the peal of bells on the second flute and pizzicato strings - the unavoidable open strings of the lower stringed instruments are intentional. The chorus “Wenn es meines Gottes Wille" intensifies the joyful anticipation of death to such a degree that the final chorale is altered in its otherwise subdued expression by the lively counterpoint of the recorders (in unison).