This disc and its companion SACDA67308 contain all Bach’s extant concertos that feature a solo keyboard. Most were written in the 1730s and are thought to be arrangements of earlier concertos, many of which are now lost (though two will be recognized as Bach’s E major and A minor violin concertos and the sixth is an arrangement of the fourth Brandenburg). The fifth Brandenburg Concerto, with harpsichord, flute and violin soloists, dates from 1721 and is generally regarded as the first concerto for a solo keyboard instrument ever written. Bach made the keyboard part particularly brilliant and included a huge cadenza; he certainly knew how to establish a genre with a bang!
Hewitt’s Bach is by now self-recommending but only after playing Bach across the world with numerous ensembles did Angela decide that the Australian Chamber Orchestra were the perfect collaborators. After a month of concerts across Australia these recordings were set down in Sydney in February of this year and the frisson of artists operating at the peak of their form is clear for all to hear. One is immediately struck by the quality of chamber-music playing as phrases are passed from soloist to orchestra and, in the case of Brandenburg Concerto No 5 and the Triple Concerto, between all three soloists. Rhythms are buoyant, tempos lively, the spirit of dance is never far away in the fast movements and a perfectly vocal quality pervades the sung lines of the slow movements.
These CDs will surely be the jewels in the crown of Angela Hewitt’s magnificent Bach series.

AllMusic Review by James Manheim
Several factors come together to make this an exceptionally satisfying item among the various recordings devoted to specific liturgical services by English collegiate choirs. One is that Ash Wednesday is rarely the recipient of this treatment on recordings: the inward quality, diverging from the festive mood of Christmas recordings and the like, is quite compelling. Another factor is that the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, under director Andrew Nethsingha has a combination of fervency and clarity that is always impressive and is uniquely well suited to this particular project. Third, the immediacy of a live performance (the album was made on Ash Wednesday, 2019) is strikingly rendered here. There are a few minor imperfections that only add, like those in a painting of the period, to the effect of the whole. Nethsingha recounts how he recruited a pair of boy sopranos who could handle the high Cs in the Miserere of Gregorio Allegri, only to have one of the two drop out due to illness; the second acquits himself admirably. That famed Allegri work is part of a beautifully constructed program that proceeds from brilliance (the Allegri) to compact Anglican harmonies (Thomas Weelkes), to the deeply inward quality of Byrd's Ne irascaris, Domine, which has rarely been so beautifully performed. The whole has the effect of a spiritual journey, and it's enhanced by sound using the choir's microphones, installed for the group's webcasts, rather than those of the BBC that were present on the same occasion. The group really inhabits the sound environment and the space. Bravo. Bravissimo.

This album is the moving homage of the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir to the man who founded it in 1950 and remained its leader for 40 years. The choral conductor and composer Knut Nystedt passed away in December 2014, at the age of 99, and the disc may to some extent be regarded as an epitaph for him. Alongside two Bach motets the programme includes four works which span almost forty years of Nystedt’s long career, from Peace I leave with you, written in 1957 and still one of the composer’s most often performed works, to Be not afraid from 1995. These two motets, as well as O Crux (1977) are a cappella compositions, while the setting from 1986 of Ave Maria is something of a rarity, for solo violin and mixed choir. The violin part is performed by Maria Angelika Carlsen, artistic leader of the Ensemble Allegria, a group of young Norwegian string players that join the choir in the two Bach motets, and also in the closing work on the disc: Immortal Bach. In this atmospheric piece, the composer has taken the first eight bars of Bach’s chorale Komm, süsser Tod, stretching the tempo of its melodies and harmonies to create an impression of timelessness and endlessness. Grete Pedersen, Nystedt's successor as artistic leader of the choir, provides the arrangement for strings and choir.

Johann Sebastian Bach
Partitas No. 1, 5 & 6
Murray Perahia
recorded December 2008 & April 2009
released in 2009
Sony Classical
886974436126
Murray Perahia imbues Bach's First, Fifth, and Sixth Partitas with the same mastery, care, and insight that distinguished his recordings of Nos. 2, 3, and 4. The B-flat Partita's tempos never exceed what one can comfortably dance to or sing, highlighted by the lyrically animated Sarabande and loud yet not aggressive Gigue. The E minor opening Toccata's declamatory and fugal sections emerge as an integrated, unified whole, while Perahia uses subtle accents and contrasted dynamics to bring out the Corrente's cross-rhythmic potential. He brings multi-colored, expressive variety to the Sarabande's arpeggiated chords and articulates the Tempo di Gavotta as if Glenn Gould's uncanny contrapuntal acumen and Edwin Fischer's velvet paws had morphed.
The latter description particularly befits the G major Partita's Corrente and Tempo di Minuetto, along with the other movements, each of which emerges with a distinct character. For example, the pianist's strong sense of conversational interplay justifies a leisurely tempo for the Allemande that others might have trouble sustaining. Perahia's variants in the repeats are noticeable yet discrete. In short, for modern sound and stylish aplomb, Perahia's Bach Partitas easily warrant a first choice recommendation. (Jed Distler for classicstoday.com)