Patrik Enander wrote:

>Another one-to-a-part performance I'm very interested is American Bach
>Soloists/Jeffery Thomas (who has sung with Rifkin) on Koch.  I have two
>cd:s with Bach cantatas with this ensemble.  I was quite a shock when I
>heard them the first time, but I have come to enjoy them very much.

On the Cantata records, at least the two I have in my hand, they list only
the soloists but their choir listings include other people, with an average
of 3 to a part.  Still, this will have quite a different sound, as you say,
when you're used to full choirs in these works.

I was there for both Bach b minor mass concerts the year they recorded
that one, and was there for the Kyrie portion of the recording as well as
the final movements.  They used about 20-24 singers as I remember, several
on a part most of the time, though occasionally they might have one on a
part, though I don't remember that.  The soloists doubled as chorus
singers.

>I read a "review" on jsbach.org where someone wrote that their Mass was
>the most satisfying Bach record he heard during 40 years of listening of
>Bach's music!

The recording,, relative to the live performances, is a more tired-sounding
one, but certainly has most of the qualities the live ones did.  In person,
they produced so much beauty and energy (in the best performances I've ever
heard of this work) that, in a church at the end of this long work, the
audience burst into shouts and foot-stamping, something you rarely hear
after this work is over.  I once heard Shaw conduct it here and the
audience was almost wholly asleep by the end, with hardly enough energy
to applaud, quick to just leave.

But the ABS performance audience reacted more like the audience in a
football stadium.  The music danced, and it wept.  The 20-24 singers, all
professional and very focused, sang lines that seemed to enter your very
being.  Unfortunately, the recording is miked too closely so that you hear
individual voices and flaws and, because of the fatigue syndrome after the
actual performances, there is some flatting (both in pitch and in energy)
where there wasn't in the original.  I can say this with confidence as I
know people who were at the concerts with audio recorders and in one case
a camcorder.  But the CD set is one of the best recordings out there and a
real achievement.

- A
http://www.andrys.com/books.html
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