Recordings
“Budding singers, composers, conductors and producers everywhere take note: this is how it’s done.” Classic FM Magazine
J.S. Bach Epiphany Mass
Bach: Missa Brevis in F major
Bach: Cantatas “Sie warden aus Saba alle kommen” and “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele”
Gabrieli Consort & Players
Congregational Choirs of Freiburg and Dresden
Paul McCreesh (conductor)
Using the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players recreate the Epiphany Mass as it might have been celebrated at St Thomas’s in Leipzig, 1740. The recording is made up of three of Bach’s most acclaimed masterpieces, and is recreated using knowledge drawn from contemporary songbooks, hymnals and devotional guides.
Excerpt: Missa Brevis in F, BWV 23
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“The singing and playing (including the local choirs) are on the highest level of excellence. The most novel aspect of the performances is the Epiphany cantata, where the pair of horns play in C alto (trumpet pitch), lending a brilliance to the music that is heard (McCreesh thinks) for the first time ever… This is an important issue, ranking with the best of McCreesh’s admirable series of recordings.”Fanfare
“The discs are a marvel of careful and imaginative reconstruction…a joy.”BBC Music Magazine
“…there is some very fine music here, from organ preludes and hymns (both accompanied and unaccompanied), to the two excellent cantatas and the Missa brevis in F major, whose borrowings and adaptations from other Bach works makes it a favorite target of purist critics, but whose six sections nevertheless are packed with phenomenal music… you will find much to enjoy.”Classics Today
DG Archiv
0289 457 6312 5 DDD AH2
November 1998