https://youtu.be/H2bWm9pKYN8Inspired marriage of art and technology. Karl Richter's recording of 75 Bach cantatas on two blu ray discs in 192/24 sound. As different as snowflakes, no two cantatas are alike. The common thread in these recordings is the tremendous rythmic drive that carries all before it. You can hear the musical greatness even on a $100 player. Better of course with a good DAC despite the digital output of the player being choked down to a 48Khz sampling rate.
75 cantatas is daunting but don't worry there won't be a test afterwards. Just relax and take them at your own chosen speed. You'll be drawn in as so many have before and find yourself compelled to listen to one after the other. My favorite? I won't hedge, it's Wachtet auf Cantata Number 140 featuring the wonderful voice of the tenor Peter Schreier. Richter assembled a fabulous group of solo singers and a choir and orchestra focused solely on Bach. Their sound is lovingly captured on this recording. And it's not all singing. There are instrumentalists
every bit as fabulous as their vocalist counterparts. For example revel in the sweet sound of Aurèle Nicolet, onetime first flute for the Berlin Philharmonic.
The packaging is lavish with a booklet having all the lyrics in German accompanied by an English translation. The cantatas are arranged on the disks according to the liturgical calendar which is confusing for us non Lutherans. Luckily there are numerical and alphabetical indexes in the booklet. Connect a screen to the blu ray player to display a list of the cantatas on each disk with numerical and alphabetical descriptions and you can pick a cantata off this list using your player's remote control.
This recording is on the Archiv label which is a division of Deutsche Grammophon. Recording number 4835037 on two blu ray disks. Not to be confused with previous issues on CD and LP. The price works out to a buck a cantata. Musical bargain of this newish century.
