Bach: Arias with Instrumental Obbligato - The Bach Aria Group, Samuel Baron

The Bach Aria Group

Samuel Baron, Flute, Music Director 
Daniel Phillips, Violin 
Ronald Roseman, Oboe
Timothy Eddy, Cello
Yehudi Wyner, Organ, harpsichord 
Carol Webber, Soprano 
D'Anna Fortunato, Alto
Jon Humphrey, Tenor
Ruud Van der Meer, Bass-baritone
Paige Morgan, Assisting oboe in 146/6 and 83/1
Douglas Myers, Franz Streitwieser, Horns in 83/1
Lisa Terry, Viola da gamba in 4l/4
Sandra Boysen-Freese, Virginia Sublett, Roberta Veazey Melissa Baber. Sopranos in 158/2
Samuel Baron, Conductor in 83/1, 33/3, 146/6

Festival Orchestra of the Bach Aria Festival and Institute 

Bach arias constitute a unique portion of our treasury of great music. Many baroque masters composed cantatas (Telemann, for example, composed more than 1,000), and many composed operas, In both these genres the arias were the musical high points, the moments when the emotions of the text were explored most fully. The arias were also the moments when the singers had their greatest opportunity for display. But no baroque master, not even the great Handel, achieved the concentrated intensity and imagination that Johann Sebastian Bach did in his arias. Indeed, the Bach arias stand out even against all other music by Bach as a special blend of vocal and instrumental display -- texted music and untexted obbligato playing combining to expound words and concrete verbal ideas (mostly religious concepts) in a highly developed concerto form.

One of the astonishing features of Bach arias is the way in which Bach converts the texts into musical images. Many people have said thạt the texts are not worthy of the music, that they are made up of routinely dogmatic Lutheran theology, that Bach's function as cantor was simply to underline the same basic concepts week after week to his fellow congregants, that he was in effect a preacher in music. But these viewpoints do not come close to explaining the glorious colors of Bach's music, they give no clue to the tremendous emotional power of the compositions, and they certainly do not account for the broad, one might say universalist, appeal of this music.