Cantata.55, 56, 98, 180(Vol.1): S.kuijken / La Petite Bande Etc

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing. Bach: Cantatas, BWV 98, 180, 56, 55 (2006) Christoph Genz (tenor), Dominik Wrner (bass baritone), La Petite Bande, La Petite Bande, Petra Noskaiova (alto), Sophie Karthuser (soprano), Sigiswald Kuijken (conductor). Sigiswald Kuijken was once just the violin-playing Kuijken who used to join his brothers, the transverse flute-playing Barthold and the viola da gamba playing Wieland, plus harpsichord playing Gustav Leonhardt to perform and record Baroque chamber music. After his gut-wrenching, soul-transforming recording of Bach's solo violin sonatas and partitas, Sigiswald Kuijken gradually moved on to conducting, principally his own ensemble, La Petite Bande. But moving up doesn't always mean moving away, and with this disc of four church cantatas by Bach, Kuijken is back in familiar territory.

Bach's cantatas, like his piety, tended to the gloomier side of post-Thirty Years' War German Lutheranism, and with titles like Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (I will carry my cross) and Ich armer Mensch, Ich Sndenknecht (I am a poor man, a slave of sin), Kuijken's choice of repertoire betrays his spiritual sympathies.