Janet Baker
   Bach & Handel

* Bach
   - Cantata 82 Ich habe genug*
   - Cantata 169 Gott soll allein mein Herze haben*
   - "Bereite dich, Zion" (Christmas Oratorio)
   - "Lobe, Zion, deinen Gott" (Cantata 190)
   - "Gelobet sei der Herr" (Cantata 129)
   - "Wohl euch, ihr auserwaehlten Seelen" (Cantata 34)
   - "Et exultavit" (Magnificat)
   - "Ach, bleibe doch" (Cantata 11)
   - "Bist du bei mir"
   - "Es ist vollbracht" (St. John Passion)
   - "Hochgelobter Gottesohn" (Cantata 6)
   - "Komm, du susse Todesstunde" (Cantata 161)
   - "Saget, saget mir geschwinde (Easter Oratorio)
* Handel
   - Ah! crudel nei pianto mio**
   - Armida abbandonata**

Janet Baker (mezzo)
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/Neville Marriner
Bath Festival Orchestra/Yehudi Menuhin*
English Chamber Orchestra/Raymond Leppard**
EMI 7243 5 74284 2 Total time: 77:44 + 77:23

Summary for the Busy Executive: Great singing, variable accompaniments.

Many years ago, when I was a student, a lot of talk went around about
the relative merits of Bach and Handel as writers for the voice.  The
general consensus ran that Handel was "vocal," Bach "instrumental." That
is, Handel wrote idiomatically for voice, while singers endured the hell
of Bach because the music was so good.  I don't take anything away from
Handel, but Bach to me, with a few decades of singing experience, gets
a bad rap.  Sure, it's hard, but it's not really "unvocal." It takes
merely a great singer functioning on all vocal and brain-cell cylinders
to bring it off.  Indeed, one can say the same for Handel.  Adequately-sung
Handel can be excruciating.  Furthermore, the so-called bad habits of
Bach's vocal writing occur in Handel's as well: awkward declamation,
freakishly wide range, and demand for the greatest vocal flexibility.
The bass singer of Bach's Cantata No. 4 must negotiate a two-octave
range -- e to e.  The same singer must negotiate Messiah's low and dark
"The people who walked in darkness" and high and bright "The trumpet
shall sound."

Fortunately, singers abound who can leap the hurdles with grace and
style: Klaus Mertens, Barbara Schlick, Laura Claycomb, and Patricia
Petibone, among others.  Indeed, in many ways they show up the older
generation of great Bach and Handel singers, like Elly Ameling and Janet
Baker, in that they ride the melismas (fast runs of notes on a single
syllable) more lightly.  But Ameling and Baker put a personal stamp,
largely missing from today's singers (Quasthoff's an exception), on
whatever they sang.  You recognized Janet Baker within a measure.  She
had not only a voice of silvery, under-the-hill beauty, but musical
smarts and an elegant way with a phrase as well - in other words, an
ideal choice for Bach.

However, I'd call the results mixed.  The excerpts with Marriner and the
ASMF suffer mainly because Marriner never gets anything going and gives
Baker nothing to play off of, despite gorgeous work from Celia Nicklin
on oboe d'amore.  The strings sound dull almost to the point of dead,
with very little excitement in the musical line.  Menuhin in the two
complete cantatas with the Bath Festival Orchestra does far better,
including excellent playing from an uncredited organist.  Baker responds
with two stunning performances, even though I have to overcome my
resentment that she's snatched a solo cantata (No. 82) usually taken by
baritones and basses.  Her aria "Schlummert ein" (a play on words: "fall
asleep" or "pass quietly away") won me over - a lullaby that wraps you
like a warm blanket.  "Death is but a sleep." This is one of Baker's
many performances of unearthly loveliness.

On the other hand, the Handel cantatas leave the Menuhin, as good as it
is, far behind.  Raymond Leppard conducts the English Chamber Orchestra
in his own realizations, and all of the sudden the music comes fully
alive.  Leppard almost always did well with Handel (I put in the "almost"
only out of native caution, just in case somehow, at some time, one of
his Handels stank and I repressed it). Baker, not ordinarily thought of
as a dramatic singer, shows most opera divas how to act with the voice.
The emotions are grand but retain their connection to actual people.
Indeed, Baker takes the stock figures of stock situations (women abandoned)
and gives them dignity and humanity.  And she sounds great, besides.

One final carp: no texts.  In the case of Handel, the texts are expendable,
but not for Bach.  Handel's music accomodates people who don't give the
text their full attention.  The emotions the text portrays are generic,
rather than particular.  On the other hand, Bach designed his cantatas
to "rouse the listeners to piety." They make a theological case. The
texts provoke the reader's mind, and you lose a good deal of Bach's drama
if you don't know what the words mean.  You also lose a good deal of
Baker's drama.  The cantata "degenerates" into mere beautiful musical
phrases.  You really do need to know the poetry the music heightens and
illustrates, even if you don't agree with the sentiments.  So although
this is a bargain disc, chintzy, chintzy EMI, and an attitude that betrays
lack of respect for its own product.  Despite this reservation and the
Marriner filler (which nevertheless contains some great moments, if only
in Baker's singing), I think a classic disc.

Steve Schwartz