Cheap Bach - Christmas Oratorio / Gardiner (Music) (Johann Sebastian Bach, John Eliot Gardiner, Nancy Argenta, Olaf Bär, Hans Peter Blochwitz, Alison Bury, Lisa Beznosiuk, Valerie Darke, Valerie Botwright) Price

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Customer Reviews of Bach - Christmas Oratorio / Gardiner

Gardiner in his garden
This is the first time I have heard this wonderful work beginning with a military march! I thought it was suppose to be a praise of the christmas message. Gardiner has got it wrong. His very "forced" conducting makes you think that he wants to improve on "the old bore of christmas music". If you want it right you return to Richter's good old Christmas Oratorio - which sounds much newer - even by technical standards than Gardiner's. And you get it at bargain prize. Richter's "Jauchzet, Frohlocket" is full of praise - mighty music. And the words are so nicely phrased by the Münchener Bach Choir. I wonder if the Monteverdi Choir knows what they are singing. Do I need to say that the singing of Janowitz and Ludwig is by far superior to that of Argenta and von Otter. And that Wunderlich and Crass are so much better than Bär and the funny noises produced by Blochwitz that you sometimes doubt if it is the same music.

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Review
I bought this just to listen to Anne Sofie Von Otter's voice on "Schlafe mein Liebster ...". Very beautiful.

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Good, but it's still Gardiner!
I must say that for most of Gardiner's recordings that I find them
rather dull. I bought his Beethoven symphonies, his Bach St. Matthew Passion, his Bach B Minor Mass, and, of course, this one. The Mass is not bad (three stars), the Beethoven is too fast and perky, and the St. Matthew.....well, it's popcorn Baroque interpretation all the way, though it has some fine singers on it. But Gardiner and his damn lack of musical instincts ruins it with tempi that are too fast. (I am a musicologist, so I am aware of his son's statement about his tempi....but we really have NO idea what that meant for the times. We must trust the natural flow of the harmonic rhythm of works to determine what the best tempo must be.)

But here again in this recording of the Christmas Oratorio, Gardiner has fine people to work with, and yet somehow misses the joy of this work. It is good, but not the best. Spirited, but not full of the Spirit. Clean, but rather soul-less. Best to stick with Karl Ritcher or a fine recording that is overlooked by Philip Ledger (King's College Choir) with Janet Baker. Or the more recent Rene Jacobs one. I've not heard the Rilling, so cannot comment on it.