On 2 March 1714, barely three weeks before his twenty-ninth birthday, the Weimar court organist Johann Sebastian Bach received "the title of Concertmaster." Shortly before he had turned down an important organist's position in Halle; the promotion to concertmaster, granted "at his most humble request," clearly represented a quid pro quo on the part of his employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. As the principal condition of his new post Bach had the obligation "to perform new pieces every month"—in today's parlance, to produce a new cantata on a monthly basis.

The fourth volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas completes the series of secular cantatas from the composer's years in Leipzig. Seven works are involved here, spanning a period from 1725 to1742, the year of Bach's final secular cantata, BWV 212. Of Bach's occasional compositions, some fifty secular pieces have survived, yet these represent no more than a fraction of what must once have existed. Bach's secular cantatas cover a period of almost exactly three decades.

The third volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas comprises works drawn from three different categories. First comes a group of seven sacred cantatas from the years 1714-17, the majority of which were written for the Weimar Schloßkirche. Taken together with the cantatas contained in Volumes 1 and 2,these seven works - Cantatas 54,63,155, 161,162,163 and 165 - form the group of 23 sacred cantatas that have survived complete from the years leading up to the end of Bach's term of office as Konzertmeister to the Weimar court in 1717.

In the autumn of 1713, Bach was invited to apply for the post of organist and music director at the Marktkirche in Halle in succession to Handel's teacher, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow. Bach was honoured to accept the invitation and in doing so made it clear that he was keen to extend his activities. Under Zachow, who had created a respectable repertory of sacred works of the most varied genres, including a large number of church cantatas, music in Halle had flourished and reached a level that offered Bach an area of responsibility that he evidently found attractive.

Haydn’s late masterpiece, The Creation/Die Schöpfung has always existed in two versions, one in English and one in German. Loosely based on Milton’s Paradise Lost version of the creation story, the libretto had actually been offered to Handel, who never got around to setting it. Johann Salomon, the impresario, passed it to Haydn in 1794. Haydn was interested but apparently did not feel confident enough in his English to set the work in its original format.

Nach der atemberaubenden Einspielung der Concerti grossi nun ein Blick in das umfassende geistliche Schaffen Johann David Heinichens, jenes am Dresdner Hof des kunstsinnigen August des Starken tätigen Kompositeurs, um dessen Stelle sich 1733, vier Jahre nach Heinichens Tod, ein gewisser J. S. Bach aus Leipzig — vergeblich — bewarb.

Gustav Leonhardt began recording Bach's secular cantatas on Philips in 1990 after completing the sacred cantatas cycle with Harnoncourt. Those Philips discs were well received but are now hard to find, either on CD or as downloads, so I was thrilled to discover that Leonhardt, now 80, just recorded another pair of Bach's secular cantatas.

JOHN ELIOT GARDINER und ein junges Sängerensemble bezaubern den Hörer: Christiane Oelze ist eine betörend sympatische Pamina. So gestochen scharfe und dabei klangvolle Koloraturen wie von Cyndia Sieden habe ich so noch nicht gehört; eine Königin der Extraklasse! Auch Michael Schade als Tamino und Gerald Finley als Papageno bestechen mit ihren wohlkingenden und ausdrucksfähigen Stimmen.

Due to its disastrous Viennese premiere in 1954, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Symphony in F sharp was quickly dropped from the repertoire. Yet this late masterpiece, along with Korngold's opera Die tote Stadt, found receptive audiences in the 1970s and has become one of his best-known works. The old criticisms against Korngold's traditional tonality, his conservative formal bent, and his professional Hollywood polish no longer matter; nor should his occasionally spicy dissonances, angular melodies, and ambitious orchestration prove an obstacle to appreciation. Korngold's dense and dramatic symphony may be regarded either as a late development of Mahlerian post-Romanticism or as an offshoot of tonal Modernism, as practiced by Shostakovich and Prokofiev.

When this recording was released in 1996, the words most often used to describe it were "luminous" and "radiant." The adjectives fit: the choir and orchestra have a glowing sound that makes the chorales in particular wondrous to hear. The most extroverted choruses and arias lack the extra measure of vigorous excitement of John Eliot Gardiner's performance, but Koopman's tender approach is beguiling. What's more, his male soloists are marvelous: bass Klaus Mertens is sensitive and energetic in equal measure; Christoph Prégardien manages the fearsome tenor arias easily and his singing of the Evangelist's recitatives strikes a fine balance between vocalism and narration. Lisa Larsson's soprano and Elisabeth von Magnus's contralto have a purity suggestive of the teenage boys for whom Bach wrote (though one sometimes hears a youthful fragility in the voices as well).

This reading shows the gentleness of the work perfectly…The essence of the score that Herreweghe brings out so well is Mendelssohn's flawless counterpoint, not just the fugal choruses but between orchestra and choir or woodwind and strings. The harmonic richness leaps out from the opening of the overture, with its lush orchestration of the chorale Wachet auf. It makes so much sense on a period orchestra.

Schutz’s Weinachtshistorie is a magnificent Christmas counterpart to the Passion, and one can perhaps understand that during his lifetime the composer would only permit musicians of a certain standard to perform it in its entirety. The present recording is in most respects excellent. The choir are on very good form, bright, perfectly tuned (listen to Intermedium II, “The Multitude”, for example, or the vigorous characterization of the Magi in Intermedium IV), the instrumental contributions are discreet but vigorous when necessary, and the soloists all good. Paul Agnew is, I feel, a little matter of fact at the beginning, but seems to warm up as the work progresses (always a dangerous thing to say since, for all one knows, the work may have been recorded entirely in reverse order, but that is the impression given).

As you might expect, Herreweghe's account of the Christmas Oratorio is as authoritative as any. His orchestra and choir are lively but always precise and his soloists all excel. Most impressively, Herreweghe is able to marshal his impressive forces to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The Christmas Oratorio isn't the most coherent of Bach's works, but Herreweghe brings it all together, not so much by imposing architecture as by maintaining the flow of the music and not letting any single movement stand out too much from its surroundings.

With stiff competition from Norrington on EMI and Östman on L’Oiseau-Lyre, Gardiner’s Magic Flute enters the period instrument stakes somewhat belatedly. It offers no major musicological revelations – no reinstated numbers or serious reorderings that often come with period Mozart these days. Its only textual novelties are the trumpets and drums at the start of Act I, where in accordance with Mozart’s original manuscript Tamino is pursued by a lion rather than a snake, and a selection of numbers, presented as an appendix, sung to the alternative texts given in the first printed score.

Nathalie Stutzmann is regarded as one of the most remarkable musical personalities of our time and one of a few genuine contralto voices.