Artist: Jos van Veldhoven, The Netherlands Bach Society
Title Of Album: J.S.Bach: Magnificat
Year Of Release: 2010
Label: Channel Classics Records B.V.
Country: Netherlands
Genre: Classical Music, Christmas
Quality: FLAC (*tracks, d.booklet)
Bitrate: Lossless [24Bit/192kHz]
Time: 01:04:21
Full Size: 2,03 GB (+3%)
All the music on this release is associated with the festival of Christmas. Bach wrote the cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (BWV 110) for morning service on Christmas Day 1725, and the first version of the Magnificat in E flat major (BWV 243a) for Vespers on Christmas Day 1723, seven months after the Leipzig town council appointed him cantor of the Thomaskirche. It would hardly be exaggerating to say that Bach thus presented his visiting card to his new employer. According to the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, the work is his "first really large-scale and complex piece of church music".
This is terrific Bach singing and playing, and even if you already own one or two or three Magnificats, you won't be sorry to add this one--so vibrant and fresh-sounding, and possessed of the hopeful, optimistic spirit of the texts and music. And the sound, well, Channel Classics has a lock on whatever combination of technical know-how and magic is involved in making consistently demonstration-quality recordings. Don't hesitate to include this in your holiday-season acquisitions. Highly recommended.
