CCMusic.com

Kuijken gives us Vvolume 9 of his series devoted to presenting one cantata for each Sunday and holy day of the year. With this collection, dedicated to the Sundays of Advent, a few problems arise. All of Bach's Advent works are from Weimar (earlier) and Leipzig (later) as to be expected, except that in Leipzig the Advent cantata was given only on the first Sunday of the month, the other Sundays being sans cantata. His earlier sojourn in Weimar was different; there, each Sunday was expected to have a cantata provided for it. So what's the big deal? Only that for Weimar, cantatas on the second, third, and forth Sundays alone have been preserved, and those for the second and third Sundays are known only by their texts-no music has survived. This necessitates presenting only one Advent cantata (for the first Sunday alone), or compromising a bit and stretching the Leipzig "first Sunday" cantatas to cover the Sundays that have no music for them. Standards remain high in this vividly recorded series, though for some reason the singing of Siri Thornhill really caught my attention this time around, her lovely instrument able to navigate Bach's complexities with subtle and authoritative adroitness. Despite the questionable one-to-a-part dogmatism, this series is musically very fine. - FANFARE: Steven E. Ritter Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.