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GRAMOPHONE (06/2015)
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Hyphen Press Music
HPM008 



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Reviewer: Fabrice Fitch

Behind this project’s eye-catching title lies a neat concept, and a more nuanced reality. The lives of Bach, Telemann, and Graupner intersected at various points, the most conspicuous professional occasion being their candidacy for the post of Kantor at the Thomasschule, Leipzig. The first of these two discs lets us hear the pieces they each submitted for their respective auditions (or almost: Telemann’s doesn’t survive, so a ‘reasonable facsimile’ is offered in its place), and the second presents the cantatas all three composed for the very same Sunday a year or so later (January 30, 1724). The programme is completed with instrumental ouvertures (or suites) by Telemann and Graupner.

The object of the exercise is not to praise the winner of the competition yet again (after all, Bach was offered the job only after the other two had turned it down), but to offer a space for something like dispassionate comparison. In this, the programme and performances succeed: Graupner’s treatment of the story of Christ’s saving himself and his disciples from shipwreck on the sea of Galilee has plenty of fury about it. Indeed, he comes out of the exercise rather well, his cantatas having much to offer, both formally and illustratively. I was not so taken with Telemann’s efforts on this occasion, and

Bach’s audition cantata doesn’t strike me as being out of the top drawer by his own standards. I’d say the same, incidentally, of the ouvertures by Telemann and Graupner, both of whom wrote hundreds of them (as opposed to Bach’s four!).

The Bach Players turn in fine performances: the oboe parts in Bach’s and Graupner’s audition cantatas are impressively handled. The singers too give a good account of themselves, barring some of the bravura passages in the 1724 cantatas that seem to stretch the male soloists in particular. On the other hand, the ‘Tombeau’ movement from Graupner’s suite had me pondering whether the players hit the right note there: funereal or not, could the composer have intended something quite so ponderous?

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