BWV 78, duet w/ Teresa Stich-Randall and D. Hermann

"Jesu, der du meine Seele" BWV 78
J.S. Bach

Choir and Orchestra of the Bach Guild
conducted by Felix Prohaska, Vienna, 1954

This is the wonderful duet from the pictured, and unfortunately now out of print, Vanguard Classics CD.

Pasted below is a nice review of this recording left by a listener at amazon.com.

A KNOCKOUT WAITING TO BE A HIT
November 26, 2003
By DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

If you can find this record you are hereby incited to obtain it by fair means or foul. Everything on it is good. The comparatively well-known Actus Tragicus, Cantata 106, is sombre, grief-laden and desolate, the tempi slow and the expression devotional and unworldly.

What is pre-emptive about this disc however is Cantata 78, or rather the second number in Cantata 78, the duet `Wir eilen...' for soprano and contralto. It seems that every now and again this comparatively obscure piece comes to someone's notice fortuitously and sets off the same sort of reaction. It apparently achieved fame over the airwaves in at least two widely separated parts of America, a friend of mine picked it instantly as his wedding voluntary, I myself was bowled over by it when I first heard it 35 years ago, gave my copy to my mother thinking I could easily replace it, failed totally to do that and have been searching forlornly for it ever since. Somehow the piece has never `established' itself in the way Jesu Joy and Wachet Auf have done. You might hardly recognise it as Bach at all, at least to start with. He can be exuberant indeed, but I can think of nothing by him quite like this. A superficial first hearing almost suggests something from a Mozart opera rather than a Bach Cantata. It is not an elaborate piece at all, just a canonic duet with a simple accompaniment on a small organ. The two singers set each other off beautifully and although Dagmar Hermann really outshines Teresa Stich-Randall that doesn't seem to matter. There is something about the way the voices complement each other, even their oddly different ways of taking breaths, that is simply pleasurable beyond words.

The recorded sound is not spectacular, but it doesn't have to be. What is spectacular, though in a very unshowy way, is the duet itself. Do not go to your final reckoning without getting to know it or you may be asked why not.

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