Karl Richter

Munchener Bach-Orchester & Karl Richter – J.S. Bach: Cantatas – Sundays After Trinity II (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 05:43:21 minutes | 6,68 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archiv Produktion

After the dearth of major festivals in the middle of the weeks following Trinity Sunday, the end of the Lutheran church year sees two important ones, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels and Reformation Day. Both fall on fixed dates, so that their position in relation to the numbered Sundays after Trinity varies from year to year. Reformation Day celebrates Martin Luther’s historic nailing of his 95 Theses to the door of the church of Wittenberg Castle, and it is observed on the anniversary of the event, 31 October (except in a few places which chose to do so on the Sunday following that date). It was the newest of the church festivals in Bach’s day (Harvest Festival had not yet been instituted), and indeed at that time it was still celebrated only in Electoral Saxony, the heartland of the Reformation.

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Munchener Bach-Orchester & Karl Richter – J.S. Bach: Cantatas – Sundays After Trinity (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 06:00:21 minutes | 6,53 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archiv Produktion

This section contains cantatas for the Sixth to Seventeenth Sundays after Trinity: a period when no festivals occur. The same is often said of the whole of the second half of the church year but that is not altogether true. There are no major feasts between the Visitation on 2 July and Michaelmas on 29 September but the intervening weeks are far from drab and uneventful. To this day, each single Sunday in the period spotlights an important event in Christ’s ministry on earth, and the cantatas selected for this section almost all refer to that and only exceptionally and less pointedly to the Epistle for the day.

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Münchener Bach-Orchester, Karl Richter – J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1-6 BWV1046-1051 (Complete), etc. (2002)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:33:22 minutes | 4,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Very few conductors have recorded as much Bach as Karl Richter, and none can lay a stronger claim to a legacy based on championing the master. Throughout his prolific though sadly short life (he died at age 54 from a heart attack, though the devoted still steadfastly attribute the burgeoning original-instrument movement for breaking his heart) Richter always returned to Bach and rarely recorded (or performed) the music of other composers. Richter’s reverence for Bach is evinced by the simplicity, splendor, and grandeur with which he consistently imbued his performances. Richter understood that the profound underlying architecture of Bach’s music was critical to its appreciation, enjoyment, and yes, power. As a long-standing Richter fan, I couldn’t be more overjoyed to see these benchmark Archiv performances reissued again (the fourth time for the Brandenburg’s!).

The first CD of this three-disc set begins with a performance of Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 that superbly exemplifies Richter’s remarkable intuitive grasp of Bach’s language. To get an idea of just how ahead of his time Richter was, compare the timing of his first movement (whose “brisk tempos” the Penguin Guide went out of its way to condemn when the cycle was first released in 1987) with the contemporary original-instrument account by Musica Antiqua Köln directed by Reinhard Goebel. Richter’s 1967 modern-instrument performance is two seconds slower. The man was no slouch; he understood that in Bach’s day this was contemporary orchestral music whose success required vitality as well as authority.
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Münchener Bach-Orchester, Karl Richter – Bach, J.S.: St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244 (1959/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 03:17:16 minutes | 7,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Archiv Produktion

How often a maestro’s return to his Alma Mater results in a pale reflection of previous glories—and how ironic it is that the second attempt often occurs because of the success of the original enterprise. This is certainly so in Karl Richter’s two recordings of the St Matthew Passion, where the freshness and pure theatre of the first, made in 1958, yield to a luxuriant but comparatively sentimental and over-cooked account 18 months before Richter’s death in 1981. Listening to the former in its re-released state is a revelation and it must surely glow as brightly as any great recording landmark of the 1950s. The 32-year-old Richter was at the height of his powers at this time. Committed to the spirit inhabited by his famous predecessor at St Thomas’s and steeped in the intense and resolute Lutheran culture, he exhibits something of an unselfconscious obsession to deliver Bach’s greatest rhetorical drama with profound expression. The scene is appropriately set in the opening chorus which unfolds deeply bowed and long-breathed and yet not so grave and reverential as to become oppressive as it does 20 years later. Similarly, the chorales here are forthright and highly-charged, direct and concentrated as opposed to ponderous and mannered in the later recording. It is hard to know which of the versions employs larger choral forces but, being Richter, neither is short of a full and muscular capacity. The difference, however, is that the earlier recording proffers light touches (try “Wo willst du”, on the first disc, track 14) and a range of clear articulations in the crowd scenes which in the later Munich Bach Choir are obscured by turgid and cloying textures. …
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Münchener Bach-Orchester, Karl Richter – Bach, J.S.: Orchestral Suites, BWV 1066-1069 (1961/2002)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:33:57 minutes | 3,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Archiv Produktion

Karl Richter’s recordings of Bach’s orchestral and sacred music influenced an entire generation of musicians and listeners, presenting the conductor’s unique sound and style. When Richter recorded Bach’s works, he freed them from a ponderous tradition that had mired the music in romantic sounds and idiom. Richter lightened Bach’s music, and, with an orchestra of outstanding musicians, helped bring it toward the more modern interpretations that listeners have become familiar with today. This is still a bit far from the historically-informed performances that are pretty much the norm, but there is a unity and natural originality that comes through the music in these recordings. This set includes Richter’s excellent recordings of the Brandenburg concertos, the Orchestral Suites, and the Triple Concerto for flute, violin, harpsichord and strings. In the Brandenburgs, Richter provides a light, airy sound for the strings, very different from what was common in the 1960s. His tempi, relatively quick, give the music vigour it had not known perhaps for some 200 years. The instruments take their rightful place here as soloists in an ensemble, and the balance among them is exemplary. Rare indeed, even today, are the conductors who manage to play the Second Concerto with such joy and brio as Richter. Each instrument – the trumpet, the flute, and the oboe – stands out perfectly in the first movement, with its brilliantly lively tempo. The contrast of the second movement, andante, is excellent, and the trumpet shines again as the third movement opens, in this delightful performance. Richter’s Orchestral Suites are much denser than the Brandenburgs, and the tempi more ‘standard’. He reads these more as symphonies than suites, but, then again, he puts his own imprimatur on the music. They sound a bit too German, and not French enough for my taste, but one cannot ignore that these performances are full of deep spirit and thought.
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