Choral & Song

Peasant Cantata, BWV 212;

Non sa che sia dolore, BWV 209; Amore traditore, BWV 203

Mojca Erdmann (soprano), Dominik Wörner (bass); Bach Collegium Japan/ Masaaki Suzuki

BIS BIS-2191 (hybrid CD/SACD) 63:25 mins

Bach’s sacred style is so distinctive, his output so prolific, that he’s much less familiar in secular guise. In this substantial ‘Cantate burlesque’, as the Peasant Cantata is subtitled, he’s indebted to the public comic opera developed by Reinhard Keiser in Hamburg. The Overture is a series of six contrasting fragments; the text is in German, songs are mostly short, and constructed from brief repeated phrases, some folk-related. Comedy is topical, reviling the tax collector, praising the newly-succeeded Lord of the Manor. Elsewhere you will be hard-put not to join in the belly laugh of the young farmer enjoying free beer and flirting with a peasant girl, Mieke. Bagpipes take an age to wind up drones to the right pitch for the final chorus.

The two voices are ideally cast. Mieke (Mojca Erdmann) sings with a charming simplicity as she resists and then gives way to the advances of her rustic beau, Dominik Wörner. He sings with great character, a mischievous inner grin seeming to colour his tone and clarify his diction. Both are given one full-scale Italianate aria. Wörner has bold solo horn and continuo accompanying his rumbustious song ‘in the town style’ while Erdmann has flute obbligato, as clean and unsullied as her vocal line.

After Bach in shirt-sleeves, wig awry perhaps, and with a Stein of beer in hand, come two Italian secular cantatas, their authorship both questionable, as the notes helpfully explain. Bach set the arcane text of Non sa che sia dolore, again matching soprano and flute with strings. Amore

traditore is particularly puzzling – two arias in a style quite unlike most familiar Bach, for bass and highly virtuosic and largely independent harpsichord obbligato, played with stirring bravura.