Search - Bach, Choir of St. Thomas Church :: Motets

Getting it right

kelsie | Plainview, Texas United States | 04/25/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Oh dear--where to start after reading the only other review of this disc?



First off: it should be noted that the Thomaskirche strenuously resisted multiple efforts by the Communist Party in the DDR to take over the church and its famous choir and transform them into yet another 'example' of the benefits of Communist rule. Thomaskantor Gunther Ramin was often at loggerheads with the authorities during the late 40s and early 50s, especially since Walter Ulbricht, a senior party official, was from Leipzig and fought its long history of religion and religious music with a powerful will.



Thus--why this set (and Ramin's own cut with the Thomanerchor) is important:

There is so much more happening here than 'just the music' (almost sacrilegious to say of Bach), and the CD is so much more than simply recordings of performances.



This performance speaks to us from the mid-20th century, when the Bach tradition and the very presence of Christianity itself were threatened by the Communist Party's commitment to atheism. The local University Church in Leipzig had already been blasted apart by Communist officials--there was no compelling reason to believe the Thomaskirche was guaranteed from meeting the same fate one day.



Thus, what you're hearing when you pop this into your CD player is an ensemble defiantly sticking with the intense religiousness of the Bach tradition in surroundings growing ever more hostile to such displays. There is a whole history behind each note, each voice on this CD. Sure: there are more modern and cleaner recordings of the Motets, and adding one (or five) to your CD collection is an outstanding idea. Thomas and Ramin, however, stand out uniquely because of the circumstances--the overwhelmingly hostile circumstances--that pervaded when they led a small but ancient choir through the ritual of praising God through the music of that most faithful of musicians: Bach.



For all that, then, I think we can forgive the slow (by today's norms) tempi and scratchy recording quality, don't you?"