In keeping with his cantata series as a whole, these performances suffer from inconsistency and unevenness due to John Eliot Gardiner’s general lack of feeling for the music’s pacing, either in certain individual movements or in the overall scheme of the work. Compare the two arias–one for countertenor, the other for soprano–in part one of BWV 147, two of Bach’s most masterful and endearing vocal creations, with the Joshua Rifkin/Jane Bryden version (L’Oiseau Lyre)–graced with Nancy Wilson’s incomparable violin obbligato–and you’ll immediately appreciate the difference between playing music and making music. In Gardiner’s hands, even the most familiar piece in all of Bach, the chorale Jesus bleibet meine Freude, just takes off, runs merrily along, and then just stops. No shaping, no sense of form, nor even an apparent concept of the text and Baroque style. Again, compare this with Rifkin’s equally perky-tempoed rendition and you see the difference between a conductor who seems to have really thought about the piece and one who at least appears to just be winging it. (I’m not a big Rifkin fan, but I think he often gets it right because he’s given this music substantial thought and has an innate feel and love for Bach.) In general Gardiner gets excellent work from his soloists, but Ruth Holton’s little-girl soprano neither stands up to Bach’s compelling musical lines, nor successfully partners Stephen Varcoe’s lovely, mature bass/baritone in their BWV 140 duets. There are bright, hopeful spots, however, showing that Gardiner does know something about Bach–the nice, lilt and pulsing energy in the opening chorus of Herz un Mund und Tat und Leben; the neatly contrasting articulations that accompany the chorale tune in the opening to Wachet auf–but this uneven effort in two of Bach’s most popular cantatas simply doesn’t measure up to the formidable and more assured competition.
