Search - Bach, Kooy, Chapelle :: Cantatas for Bass

Bach's cantatas weren't all for chorus. Some of the finest are for solo voice, usually with a featured solo instrument as well. (Most famous of these is the spectacular Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen for soprano and trumpet.) Yet it seems Bach only wrote three cantatas for bass soloist (those poor basses--they never get the girl or the glory), and none of those works are showpieces. All three, in fact, deal with the onset of death--and the (Lutheran) believer's relief and happiness at leaving earthly cares behind and joining his Savior in Paradise. The best known of these three solo cantatas is Ich habe genug-- which, it must be said, has gotten many a ponderous performance over the decades. In the right hands, however, the cantata has a contemplative and bittersweet quality that's not at all heavy-handed--and a plaintive melody (shared by singer and solo oboe) that can linger in your mind for hours. It's likely there are no interpreters more suited to this cantata than Philippe Herreweghe, the great baroque oboist Marcel Ponseele, and Peter Kooy, probably the most respected Bach singer of his voice range in the world. (He's so respected, in fact, that the Bach Collegium Japan regularly imports him for its cantata series.) The other two bass cantatas are similar--in scoring (with violinist Monica Huggett replacing oboist Ponseele in Der Friede sei mit dir), and in the exemplary performances they get on this disc. --Matthew Westphal