Calefax record works by Bach

• Recorded at the Doopsgezinde Kerk, Haarlem, Netherlands June 202
• Balance engineer: Nicolas Bartholomée
• Sound engineer, editing: Franck Jaffres

Just recently in my car I chose to listen to an old favorite album of music by Rameau, performed by the Calefax Wind Quintet. They have recorded all kinds of repertoire, but I have so enjoyed their recordings of Bach’s Kunst der Fuga and the aforementioned one featuring Rameau’s keyboard music. This album combines selections from Bach’s Musical Offering BWV 1079 with the Goldberg canons, BWV 1087, and the Canonische Veränderungen über Vom Himmel hoch, BWV 769, five movements borrowed from Bach’s organ repertoire.

The performers again are on top form, and the recording they’ve made now four years ago is pristine. They play on “modern” winds, including a lupophone (!), english horn, clarinets, saxophone, and more. However foreign some of these sounds may be to Bach’s ears, they always play with close sensitivity to baroque practice, in terms of tempos and the use of ornaments.

The different colors and timbres of their instruments are diversely interesting but cohesive in the overall sound, they blend well. Their placement across the stereo spectrum makes for a very enjoyable listening experience. While they reduce BWV 1079 to just nine tracks, they include the trio sonata and both versions of the ricercares, the 3-part and the 6-part.

The fourteen canons based upon the bass line of the Goldberg Variations are included as a single track. It’s believed, I think, that these variations were composed for Bach’s acceptance into a musical society, and some of these are visible in the famous Hausmann painting of Bach. It’s kind of cool, in retrospect, that his “entry” was something new, based upon something that probably had brought him at least some small fame among those that knew his music. Bach’s style, as the excellent liner notes make mention, was old fashioned in light of the music he prepared for Frederick with this Musical Offering — both the score he prepared for the king and his Goldberg canons speak to an antiquated style of music making which of course was a kind of mathematical art in how to apply good counterpoint in music. Canons, fugues, and in this case, the older term ricercar speak to the distillation of this art, where the counterpoint lives by itself, naked, alone, without the superfluous dressing of a concerto, cantata, or mass movement.

Rendered by woodwinds make the enjoyment of these musical puzzles all the more clear for us to hear. While I always enjoy hearing Bach with original instrumentation, this series of arrangements is well done and is rendered most beautifully. It’s a shame I hadn’t made mention of this delightful album before now.

Counterpoint was important too in the organ literature, with the placing of familiar hymn tunes into more elaborate treatments for the hands and feet on the organ. Rendering any of Bach's chorales with woodwinds would make for delightful music, but the transcription of the busy passagework in these organ renditions by Bach are no less interesting performed by Calefax. Perhaps moreso in this rendition we can pick out the familiar cantus firmus lines that tie these fanciful elaborations back to their origins in the Lutheran/Christian tradition.