Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Ricercar Consort, Francis Jacob :: Bach: Tombeau de Sa Majesté la Reine de Pologne

A real gem of a sublime and intimate recording

C. Razzell | California, United States | 05/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recording is worth the price of admission for the first work alone, (the Mass in A major). Although there is a division of opinion about the use of single voice to a part, the Mass here conveys an intimacy and spirituality that cannot escape the attention of the listner. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, to be sure. The solists and musicians are all in great form, and Philippe Pierlot pulls out the best from them based on his thorough technical and intuitive understanding of what this music is all about. Furhermore, I can scarcely name another CD that is better engineered to capture the warmth and detail of a musical performance than this one.



The overall program is very well conceived, and the use of Francis Jacob's organ playing to mark the division between the major works on this disc is just an example of the thoughtfulness that has gone into evey detail of producing this recorded work. (If it is not to fanciful, I am tempted to think of the insertion of the Prelude BWV 544 in between the Mass and the Cantata No. 198 as a kind of musical pallet cleanser. Of course the b minor prelude and fuge has much more merit than that in its own right, but you will benefit from this among other thoughtful touches when playing the whole program as layed out on the CD.)



This disk is somewhat easy to overlook if you are in the U.S., and the price of an import may scare you off. But this, in my view, is a disc to treasure and play frequently for years to come.



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