This Emotional Appeal We'll Take
CD: Thomas Quasthoff and Dorothea Roeschmann with Rainer Kussmaul/Berliner Barock Solisten: Bach: Dialogue Cantatas
Campaign? What campaign? What political coverage? Denial always works for me, my friends.
This week and the next you can flee the clamor of political advertising and pontificating pundits by escaping into devotion of one sort or another. Let us consider your musical alternatives.
First of all, Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and if you are A) besotted and B) not cynical (or, better yet, seeking to charm someone with the right music), Deutsche Grammophon has come to your aid by releasing an attractively priced double-disc set called Be My Valentine. It's nothing but songs of love -- or at least desire, or longing, or its fulfillment, or fleeting glimpses of the same. It includes everything from Don Giovanni's seductive duet with Zerlina to poignant selections from West Side Story to some instrumental transcriptions you'll have to hear to believe. Listen to what happens when the Cambridge Buskers do Verdi.
Of course, there are other upcoming and ongoing occasions to mark besides Valentine's Day, everything from Presidents' Day to Lent to the 1848 revolution (Some of us never forget) and much more. Again, I'll skip the politics and go right to the spiritual and musical questions, by way of Johann Sebastian Bach and the above-mentioned Dialogue Cantatas.
Do you think of passion when your thoughts turn to the good Mr. Bach, or is the term "frozen chosen" more on the mark? Well, the three cantatas here -- BWV 49, 57, and 152 -- consist of intense conversations between the voice of the divine and a human soul, and are anything but chilly. Consider these delightful sinfonias, arias, duets, and recitatives, plus that one brief, wonderful chorale from BWV 57, and suddenly contemplating the struggle between the earthly and the holy seems not a duty but a privilege.
But don't consider just the texts of the cantatas (included with the disc). Have a thought for the messengers! In those we are lucky: the German baritone Thomas Quasthoff, a singer of intelligence and sensitivity, and an emotionally intense Dorothea Roeschmann. If the latter name sounds familiar, perhaps it's because Roeschmann is featured as Countess Almaviva in Deutsche Grammophon's DVD and CD of that highly unconventional production of Le Nozze di Figaro.
Here we are on more traditional ground: Berlin's Jesus-Christus-Kirche, where Roeschmann and Quasthoff are joined by Rainer Kussmaul and the Berlin Baroque Soloists, and also, at one point, by the RIAS Chamber Choir. There's a current of joy in the performances, both from the instrumentalists and the vocalists.
The scripturally based texts -- "Blessed Is the Man" (BWV 57), "I Go and Seek with Longing" (49), and "Walk on the Road of Faith" (152) -- contain a passionate, almost sensuous spirituality that will be familiar to those of you who have read the English metaphysical poets or German baroque literature. As for the music, it is the soprano who embodies the human soul, while Jesus is voiced by the baritone. Make of that what you will!
Campaign? What campaign? What political coverage? Denial always works for me, my friends.
This week and the next you can flee the clamor of political advertising and pontificating pundits by escaping into devotion of one sort or another. Let us consider your musical alternatives.
First of all, Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and if you are A) besotted and B) not cynical (or, better yet, seeking to charm someone with the right music), Deutsche Grammophon has come to your aid by releasing an attractively priced double-disc set called Be My Valentine. It's nothing but songs of love -- or at least desire, or longing, or its fulfillment, or fleeting glimpses of the same. It includes everything from Don Giovanni's seductive duet with Zerlina to poignant selections from West Side Story to some instrumental transcriptions you'll have to hear to believe. Listen to what happens when the Cambridge Buskers do Verdi.
Of course, there are other upcoming and ongoing occasions to mark besides Valentine's Day, everything from Presidents' Day to Lent to the 1848 revolution (Some of us never forget) and much more. Again, I'll skip the politics and go right to the spiritual and musical questions, by way of Johann Sebastian Bach and the above-mentioned Dialogue Cantatas.
Do you think of passion when your thoughts turn to the good Mr. Bach, or is the term "frozen chosen" more on the mark? Well, the three cantatas here -- BWV 49, 57, and 152 -- consist of intense conversations between the voice of the divine and a human soul, and are anything but chilly. Consider these delightful sinfonias, arias, duets, and recitatives, plus that one brief, wonderful chorale from BWV 57, and suddenly contemplating the struggle between the earthly and the holy seems not a duty but a privilege.
But don't consider just the texts of the cantatas (included with the disc). Have a thought for the messengers! In those we are lucky: the German baritone Thomas Quasthoff, a singer of intelligence and sensitivity, and an emotionally intense Dorothea Roeschmann. If the latter name sounds familiar, perhaps it's because Roeschmann is featured as Countess Almaviva in Deutsche Grammophon's DVD and CD of that highly unconventional production of Le Nozze di Figaro.
Here we are on more traditional ground: Berlin's Jesus-Christus-Kirche, where Roeschmann and Quasthoff are joined by Rainer Kussmaul and the Berlin Baroque Soloists, and also, at one point, by the RIAS Chamber Choir. There's a current of joy in the performances, both from the instrumentalists and the vocalists.
The scripturally based texts -- "Blessed Is the Man" (BWV 57), "I Go and Seek with Longing" (49), and "Walk on the Road of Faith" (152) -- contain a passionate, almost sensuous spirituality that will be familiar to those of you who have read the English metaphysical poets or German baroque literature. As for the music, it is the soprano who embodies the human soul, while Jesus is voiced by the baritone. Make of that what you will!
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