Bach

The Testament of Bach

Box-set includes the two recordings below Alia Vox o AV9819 (164 minutes: ADD/DDD)

Musikalisches Opfer, BWV1079

Le Concert des Nations / Jordi Savall Alia Vox 0 AV9817 (72 minutes: DDD; aas)

Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV1080 Hesperion XX / Jordi Savall Alia Vox e AV9818 (92 minutes: ADD; aas) From Astree E2001 (11/88)

A mixed coupling of old and new recordings pays homage to Bach's last musical thoughts

A Alaska' Offering - selected comparison.

B Ku(/ken, S Knifken et al (SONY) S11K63189 `Bach's Testament' has changed over the years. Time was when, if asked to identify his most vital legacy, most people would have named the keyboard cornucopia that is the 48 Preludes and Fugues. Other eras have found more of the man in the Passion settings and the B minor Mass, while in recent years the church cantatas have come increasingly into the picture. If this shows anything, it is that Bach left something for all of us. But there is good reason to go along with Jordi Savall's assertion that his intended testament — his final statement of who he was, if you like — lies in the three great works he put together with typical organisational rigour in his last three years: the B minor Mass, The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue. Such is the thinking behind this release, which couples a new Musical Offering from Le Concert des Nations with Hesperion NA's 1986 recording of The Art of Fugue. Alas, there is as yet no B minor Mass.

The Musical Offering is presented here in fairly conventional form. The theme on which all is based is demonstrated on the flute (no doubt in deference to the flute-playing Frederick the Great who proposed it to Bach in the first place), and the 10 canons, two ricercars and one trio sonata which follow are performed on various combinations of flute, violins, bass viols, violone and harpsichord. In this respect they offer more tonal variety than the Kuijken brothers, for instance, but considerably less than the multicoloured version from Ensemble Sonnerie (Virgin, 7/96 — nla). Like the latter, however, they include the six-part Ricercar twice — once on solo harpsichord (well played by Pierre Hantai) and once arranged for solo strings.

The performances themselves show the weight of thought that one would expect from Savall. He is certainly not a musician to take this music lightly (perhaps his tendency to mutter obtrusively during the music is an expression of this), and the emphasis is firmly on the noble and serious side. This is fine — especially in the ricercars — but it seems a mistake to ignore the extent to which Bach was inhabiting his own time in some of these pieces. The Trio Sonata is the obvious example, and here Le Concert des Nations' performance misses that selfconsciously decorous mid-18th-century element which clearly informs it, particularly in the two slow movements. To put it more straightforwardly, it would have benefited from a less heavy-handed approach to both rhythm and phrasing. Likewise, I felt that some of the canons — for instance the second, with its clashing violins — could have been more playful.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, is simply that these performances are not as polished in terms of either sound or ensemble as we are used to from Savall, a failing highlighted by comparison with the older Art of Fugue recording. This is a work which Bach probably thought of in terms of the keyboard, but which has proved fair game for numerous sympathetic instrumental arrangements. Here the bulk of the work in the 14 fugues and four canons is taken by a four-part consort of viols, helped out occasionally by a wind quartet of cornett, oboe da caccia, trombone and bassoon. With viol-players of the calibre of Christophe Coin, Paolo Pandolfo and &avail himself on the one side, and cornettist Bruce Dickey on the other, they create a rapt world of beauty, eloquence and profound expressiveness by which Bach would surely have been happy to be remembered. Lindsay Kemp