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Fanfare Magazine: 38:5 (04-05/2015) 
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I was misinformed in writing (Fanfare 37:6) that the seventh and eighth sets of this series were the last, for two final issues (three well-filled discs) have now come for review. Issued at the same time is a box of 30 discs comprising the complete works of Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707) conducted or played by Ton Koopman. This has to rank with such achievements as Scott Ross’s boxed set of 34 CDs of Scarlatti sonatas, if not the boxed set of 99 CDs of Liszt piano music that won Leslie Howard mixed reviews. The contents of the 10 vocal sets (17 discs) include the alphabetized list of cantatas numbered BuxWV 1 to 112, the additional works numbered 113 to 124, and just the first three of the 10 Anhalt numbers, assigned to dubious attributions. As noted in reviewing the second issue (31:5), Georg Karstädt used the term cantata for the first 112 numbers in his thematic catalog, though Christoph Wolff in the notes to these discs divides them into several categories, eschewing the term cantata entirely.

The first disc above has three cantatas never recorded before by my count: 1, 30, and 106. The other pair of discs has seven unrecorded works: 22, 80, and 103 on one and 23, 88, 117, and 118 on the other. When Mogens Wöldike recorded BuxWV 10 on October 28, 1936 in anticipation of the composer’s tercentenary, the thought that all these works would eventually be heard on records must have been inconceivable. Even so, 10 more were recorded on shellac, but it took 65 years to fill in the rest. Koopman’s renditions are generally sung one voice to a part: The Amsterdam Baroque Choir is used only for BuxWV 1 in Volume 9 and for BuxWV 23 in Volume 10. There are quite a few works for a solo voice: BuxWV 105, 95, and 83 in Volume 9 and BuxWV 115, 17, 84, 118, 28, 117, and 35 in Volume 10. One might expect singers to be attracted to these pieces, but only BuxWV 35, 84, 95, and 105 gained much attention in the past. Aksel Schiøtz sang the last on one shellac side and, most recently, Emma Kirkby included it in her CD. Helen Boatwright and Hugues Cuénod took on the more substantial BuxWV 35. Ethel Luening’s BuxWV 84 was a prewar shellac disc, one of the first two recordings of these works made in America (again, for the tercentenary), followed by Peter Pears and Emma Kirkby (in the same CD). Koopman’s ensemble singers do not enjoy the international reputations of such singers, but their work is creditable.

Koopman uses high pitch (a’=465) as Buxtehude preferred, while much Baroque music is now recorded at a’=415, and he uses mean-tone tuning with period instruments, so this is the complete set of reference. Comparing the extensive discography one work at a time is a dissertation-level exercise for which I will defer to someone else. The set is recommended with enthusiasm.

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