J.S. Bach: Cantatas for Bass BWV 56-82-158-203 Gli Angeli Genève & Stephan MacLeod

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750): Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56:
• 1Bach: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56: I. Aria. "Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen"07:01
• 2Bach: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56: II. Recitativo. "Mein Wandel auf der Welt"01:48
• 3Bach: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56: III. Aria. "Endlich, endlich wird mein Joch"06:58
• 4Bach: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56: IV. Recitativo. "Ich stehe fertig und bereit"01:36
• 5Bach: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56: V. Choral. "Komm o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder"01:57
• Ich habe genug, BWV 82:
• 6Bach: Ich habe genug, BWV 82: I. Aria. "Ich habe genug"06:34
• 7Bach: Ich habe genug, BWV 82: II. Recitativo. "Ich habe genug"01:08
• 8Bach: Ich habe genug, BWV 82: III. Aria. "Schlummert ein"09:28
• 9Bach: Ich habe genug, BWV 82: IV. Recitativo. "Mein Gott!"00:47
• 10Bach: Ich habe genug, BWV 82: V. Aria. "Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod!"03:44
• Der Friede sei mit dir, BWV 158:
• 11Bach: Der Friede sei mit dir, BWV 158: I. Recitativo. "Der Friede sei mit dir"01:33
• 12Bach: Der Friede sei mit dir, BWV 158: II. Aria. "Welt ade, ich bin dein müde"06:25
• 13Bach: Der Friede sei mit dir, BWV 158: III. Recitativo. "Nun Herr, regiere meinen Sinn"01:22
• 14Bach: Der Friede sei mit dir, BWV 158: IV. Choral. "Hier ist das rechte Osterlamm"01:34
• Amore traditore, BWV 203:
• 15Bach: Amore traditore, BWV 203: I. Aria. "Amore traditore"06:10
• 16Bach: Amore traditore, BWV 203: II. Recitativo. "Voglio provar"00:41
• 17Bach: Amore traditore, BWV 203: III. Aria. "Chi in amore"05:37
• Total Runtime01:04:23

Info for J.S. Bach: Cantatas for Bass BWV 56-82-158-203

There are still many mysteries surrounding Johann Sebastian Bach’s personality. Yet, as new and exciting biographies appear, telling us more and more about the composer, we keep wondering what kind of a man he was in everyday life. Maybe because the very idea of the existence of such a genius is almost disturbing, and never ceases to amaze. However, that Bach was frequently called upon by instrument makers, and not only by organ builders, to listen to, gauge, and probably help tune musical instruments is no secret. He is thus closely related to the oboe family’s history since both the oboe da caccia and the oboe d’amore first appeared in Leipzig while Bach was working there. Moreover, he is the only composer to have offered music (the Passions and numerous cantatas) to the former and its warm, tender tone.

Bach showed unique know-how in the understanding and the use of the instruments’ potential, never limiting any of them to one or two modes of expression when composing, but making the most of all their technical, sonic and expressive facets. He also treated each voice tessitura with equal exactness. Whereas the bass voice is also that of Christ in the Passions, or the evocation of the voice of God in certain cantatas, Bach did not confine it to this sole use. From one Sunday to the next, the bass voice could just as well embody a thundering preacher as a desperate Christian.

Therefore, it is striking that three of Bach’s four surviving cantatas for bass solo present such similarities regarding the theme of their librettos and their chronological proximity. BWV 56 and 82 were composed in 1726 and 1727 in Leipzig. BWV 158 is an older piece from which only fragments have survived. It was revived in Leipzig, probably as early as 1728, according to Joshua Rifkin (or between 1728 and 1731, according to other historians and biographers). If Rifkin says right, we are faced with a proper cycle, a yearly and regular punctuation in the music produced for the liturgical calendar that Bach presented each Sunday. In those years, the composer seems to have regularly privileged the solo bass voice to evoke the relieved and longed-for passage from life to death, most often summoning Simeon, the one who tells us that now, finally, is the moment to die.

This thematic unity will come as no surprise to musicians familiar with Bach’s cantatas, in which the acceptance and hope of death is one of the most recurrent themes, if not the main one, of the entire corpus. But, in the present case, we were nevertheless surprised by its intensity. Bach does the same with human voices as with musical instruments: he seizes death, our fear of death and its expectation, to depict it in all forms and manners, at all levels of expressive intensity and with all possible musical means. His art opens up an infinite prism of perceptions of the world, and his genius definitely makes life more acceptable.

Emmanuel Laporte, oboe (BWV 56-82)
Eva Saladin, violin (BWV 158)
Bertrand Cuiller, harpsichord (BWV 203)
Stephan MacLeod, bass, conductor
Gli Angeli Genève

Gli Angeli Geneve
was founded in 2005 by Stephan MacLeod. A formation of varying size, playing on period instruments (or copies thereof), the ensemble is made up of musicians who have careers in the field of baroque music, but who are not only active in this field: they do not play solely early music. Their eclecticism guarantees the vitality of their enthusiasm. It is also a driving force behind their curiosity.

Right from the beginning of a musical adventure that for several years concentrated solely on live performances of the complete Bach Cantatas in Geneva, with three concerts per season, Gli Angeli Genève has been the setting for encounters between some of the most famous singers and instrumentalists of the international baroque scene and young graduates of the High Schools of Music of Basel, Lyon, Lausanne and Geneva.

Internationally acclaimed since the release in 2009 and 2010 of its first two CDs, which won numerous critical awards, the ensemble now gives seven or eight concerts per season in Geneva, as part of its Complete Bach Cantatas on the one hand, a series of annual concerts at the Victoria Hall on the other, and since September 2017 in a new complete series dedicated to Haydn’s Symphonies. The ensemble is equally in demand in Switzerland and abroad for performances not only of Bach, but also Tallis, Josquin, Schein, Schütz, Johann Christoph Bach, Weckmann, Buxtehude, Rosenmüller, Haydn, Mozart and others. In recent seasons, Gli Angeli Genève has been in residence at the Utrecht Festival and the Thüringer Bachwochen, and has also performed in Basel, Zurich, Lucerne, Barcelona, Nürnberg, Bremen, Stuttgart, Brussels, Milan, Wroclaw, Paris, Ottawa, Vancouver, Amsterdam and The Hague. Gli Angeli Genève is a regular guest at the Festival de Saintes, Utrecht festival, the Musikfest in Bremen or the Bach Festival in Vancouver. The ensemble made its debut in 2017 at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva and in 2019 at the KKL in Lucerne.

Gli Angeli Genève’s recording Sacred Music of the 17th century in Wroclaw won the ICMA prize for best vocal baroque music recording of the year in 2019.

Stephan MacLeod
is a conductor and a singer. Born in Geneva, he’s the founder and artistic director of Gli Angeli Genève, an ensemble that specializes in repertoires from the 17th to the 19th century on period instruments, he now conducts between 40 and 50 concerts per year worldwide, a growing number of which as guest conductor with “modern” orchestras. He is also happily pursuing his singing career and teaches singing at the Haute Ecole de musique de Lausanne (HeMU).

In 2020, he will conduct and record the world premiere of Antonin Reicha’s Sinfonia Concertante for two cellos and orchestra with cellists Christophe Coin and Davit Melkonyan and Gli Angeli Genève, several Haydn symphonies and Mozart concert arias, Bach’s St. John Passion in Oslo with Barokkanerne, the St. Matthew Passion with the Philharmonic Zuidnederland, the b-minor mass on tour in France and Switzerland with Gli Angeli Genève and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio on tour on the west coast of the United States and Canada in December, with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

Stephan MacLeod studied the violin and the piano before turning to singing, which he first studied at the Conservatoire de Genève, then with Kurt Moll at the Cologne Musikhochschule and finally with Gary Magby at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne. His singing career began during his studies in Germany through a fruitful collaboration with Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Köln. It was then that the doors of the oratorio world opened to him and he’s regularly singing ever since on the most important stages around the world under the direction of conductors such as Philippe Herreweghe, Jordi Savall, Frieder Bernius, Franz Brüggen, Masaaki Suzuki, Michel Corboz, Gustav Leonhardt, Christophe Coin, Konrad Junghänel, Hans-Christoph Rademann, Sigiswald Kuijken, Vaclav Luks, Philippe Pierlot, Helmut Rilling, Rudolf Lutz, Raphael Pichon, Paul Van Nevel or Jos Van Immerseel, as well as with Daniel Harding or Jesus Lopez Cobos.

A singer in love with song and melody, he gives many recitals but has also been heard on opera stages, including productions by La Monnaie in Bruxelles, La Fenice in Venice, and also on the opera stages of Geneva, Toulouse, Nîmes, Bordeaux, Cologne, Potsdam, Freiburg, Girona etc.

Since 2005 and in parallel with his singing career, he has also devoted himself to conducting and is the founder of the Ensemble Gli Angeli Genève, which has been reaping the benefits of significant international recognition in recent years.

Since 2013, he has been a singing teacher at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne and shares his career between teaching, his commitments as a singer, his ensemble, and invitations to conduct – particularly Bach – more and more frequently. He regularly conducts the musicians of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, but also the Philharmonie Zudnederland, the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, etc.

Stephan MacLeod’s discography includes more than 90 CDs, many of them critically acclaimed.

Booklet for J.S. Bach: Cantatas for Bass BWV 56-82-158-203