Musical bargain of the year?

Until the end of this month, you can pick up an amazing bargain at classical music specialists MDT. The classical music industry may be finding things tough at the moment, and perhaps because of this there seems to be a constant arrival of re-packaged classics from the back catalogues of major labels. The giant Warner Records (technically Warner Classics & Jazz) owns the catalogue of Teldec and not only have we seen individual recordings from Das Alte Werk (I'll blog about some of these later this week), but the pioneering complete recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach's sacred cantatas led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt & Gustav Leonhardt. 60 CDs which MDT are selling for a paltry £96 until July the 28th (it's currently £150 at Amazon and £144 at Europadisc - both very good prices too!).

I'd thought that Brilliant Classics' astonishingly cheap re-issue of Alistair Dixon & the Chapelle du Roi's collection of the complete works of Thomas Tallis would be the best recent boxset I'd picked up - 10 CDs filled with wonderful music for a paltry £20 - but it's the Harnoncourt & Leonhardt set that has to be, for me, the bargain of the year.

Words like 'groundbreaking' and 'classic' are probably bandied about with too much abandon. But this monumental project for once fits both terms. The first to follow through theories on instrumentation and performance practice and record throughout (with two exceptions) using all-male voices, you can pretty much trace back the 'period instrument' and 'period performance' movements that have revitalised the music of the baroque period to Harnoncourt, Leonhardt and their colleagues. It's probably a bit of an irreverent comparison, but just like punk swept away the bloated musical dinosaurs of the 1970s, this enterprise marks a vital step away from the foursquare 'monumental' school of Bach performance which, for me, can swamp the music.

There are too many highlights to list them here. One highlight that stretches across a large proportion of the set consists of the vocal performances of tenor Kurt Equiluz. I'd earlier come across him when trawling through various recordings of the Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachtsoratorium) for our Christmas website. If anything, the sum of his performances in the cantatas is a significantly greater achievement. He almost always seems able to achieve the sometimes tricky balance between personal expression and the requirements of the text and the musical vision of each cantata. The three cantatas whose equivalent liturgical date was yesterday (BWV 186, 187 & 107) are exemplary - clarity of line, stylish playing and an utterly committed energy run through each one.

There are dissenting voices - Nikolaus Harnoncourt in particular is someone who prompts much passionate discussion on the Bach Cantatas website (for instance, on this page). What do people object to? These are the early days of 'authentic instruments' or 'period performance' and the theory behind it (especially the rather esoteric point about short notes rather than long legato notes during recitatives) and its realisation (particularly what can sound on occasion like a struggle to keep the period instruments in tune) are anathema to some. Similarly, boy sopranos rather than adult female sopranos are used throughout (with the exception of Barbara Bonney in BWV 199 & Marianne Kweksilber in BWV 51): some people don't like the sound, some think the boys aren't up to it.

For me these are quibbles. Again, speaking personally, there are times when it doesn't work - but these times are the exception rather than the rule. Sometimes there are problems with tuning; occasionally the music seems to be a stretch too far for some of the boy soloists. But quibbling over details, for me, rather misses the point. Here it's not so much a question of how important these recordings were - you can understand their effect on performance practice without necessarily wanting to listen to them! What's most important to me is more the way in which you can hear the collective vision, moulded by Harnoncourt & Leonhardt, applied to music of bewildering variety and quality, turned out week after week by the cantor of St Thomas in Leipzig. This is music-making on the edge - the rewards in pursuing such a risky, edgy vision far outweigh the times when it doesn't quite come off. You don't have to take my word for it. Peter Watchorn, whose own harpsichord recordings - especially JS Bach's Well Tempered Clavier - are well worth seeking out, has written an inspiring review for the US Amazon site - linked to here.

It's a huge box of delights and more than holds its own in comparison to people who have turned their hand to the cantatas since like Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman, Sigiswald Kuijken & Masaaki Suzuki (to name just a few). To still stand up so well more than 30 years since it was started is quite an achievement.