La Petite Bande & Sigiswald Kuijken - Kantaten im Januar (2021) [Hi-Res]

Sigiswald Kuijken's Bach cantata recordings, and in particular his complete series for Accent which culminated almost a decade ago now, haven't enjoyed quite the degree of international attention garnered by those of John Eliot Gardiner and Masaaki Suzuki with their own respective series, and this perhaps isn't completely surprising when Kuijken has consistently championed the one-voice-to-a-part approach. After all, even if one can get on board with one-to-a-part from a historical accuracy perspective, many find it a little harder to get on board with from a pleasure-listening angle, when the casualty of all that authenticity is textural variety – and indeed there's evidence that Bach himself was often frustrated by the slim vocal forces at his disposal.

As ever, therefore, this three-strong, January-shaped return to the cantatas – for the third Sunday after Epiphany and the Sunday Septuagesima (the third Sunday before the start of Lent) - features one voice to a part, with La Petite Bande correspondingly chamber-forced. Also worth flagging up is that Kuijken has opted for a female rather than a male alto soloist. Inevitably therefore, the choruses lack the punch you'll hear from multi-voice offerings. However what you lose in weight, you gain in nimbleness, and the vocal performances here are all both enjoyable and text-aware. Likewise, the sound from La Petite Bande is sprightly, mostly attractive of tone, and with perhaps slightly less bite than heard from The English Baroque Soloists. The church acoustic meanwhile comes across with naturalness and a gentle bloom, and on the whole a good balance between parts, although the busy cello lines of BWV 92's Das Brausen von den rauhen Winden do rather cry out for a little more engineering love.

If intimate, one-to-a-part Bach is of interest, this is certainly worth a listen.