Luogo e data di registrazione		Amsterdam (Holland) - Giugno 1977
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" | SKW 19/1-2 | 2 LPs - durata 37' 10" - 33' 30" | (p) 1977 | ANA
	Edizione CD		Teldec Classics | LC 6706 | 8.44279 ZK | 1 CD - durata 70' 08" | (c) 1989 | ADD
	Cover		Johann Sebastian Nach, einige Jahre vor seiner Ernennung zum Kantor in Leipzig. Gemälde con JJ. Ihle (1720) Bach Museum Eisenach.
	Note		-

INTRODUCTION by Ludwig Finscher “Herr, wie du willt” (BWV 73), composed for the third Sunday after epiphany in Bach’s first year in office in Leipzig (23rd January, 1724), is closely related from the textual point of view, and in some musical details, with cantata BWV 72, which is two years younger, but in character it is the exact opposite. In the earlier work the quiet and joyful submission to God’s will is represented with chamber musical discretion, while here, painted in powerful colours, the emphasis is on the contrast between God’s inflexible decree and human weakness in the face of death. The composition derives from this contrast a tension emerging in highly unusual forms and compositional techniques. The opening chorus (G minor/G major) construes at three levels the basic concept of the Sunday gospel (the healing of the leper) and of the cantata text: in the orchestra ritornello, which builds up on the motto-like principal motif of the chorale (“Herr, wie du willt”, b-b-g-b), in the line by line chorale development in relatively simple and compact choral movement, and in the fearful and faint-hearted recitative insertions of single voices, answered consolingly and at the same time demandingly by the ritornello motif and chorale lines. The distribution of the “roles” in this extraordinary movement is just as strikingly dramatic as the movement’s conclusion, in which the chorus three times utters the sense of the instrumental ritornello maxim: “Herr, wie du willt”. In the tenor aria (E-flat major) again the “mentally sick” individual requests “the spirit of joys”, and once more the conflict which the text describes is captured in clearly contoured, musically rhetorical detail representation as a contrast between the gentle aria main section and the chromatically tormented middle section. The Bach recitative and aria (C minor) paint anew, and in even darker colours, the horrors of death - despite the fact that the aria text, again concentrating on the motto “Herr, so du willt”, refers to the “fearless” submission to God’s will. In the tightly woven fabric comprising the highly expressive declamatory vocal part and chromatically contrapuntal string movement, into which the “tolling bells of the dead” are blended, the cantata reaches in this aria its gloomy climax. It is not until the turn to C major in the very last bar of the final chorus that the work reverts to the actual theological summing up: “Lob, Ehr’ und Preis” (praise, honour and prize). “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten” BWV 74), for Whitsunday (20th May) 1725, uses a text by Mariane von Ziegler, a disciple of the Leipziger Gottsched, in which words from the Sunday gospel (Nos. 1, 4 and 6 of the cantata) are commented upon by way of recitatives and arias; the second verse of the Whitsun hymn “Gott Vater, sende deinen Geist” provides the theological summing up. The two first movements of the composition go back to the brief Whitsun Cantata BWV 59 (Nos. 1 and 4 in that work); at the same time the chamber music-like opening duct from BWV 59 has been transformed with astounding working economy into a splendid, highly colourful chorus (in C major), which in concertante play between trumpet, oboe and string chorus and light-hearted choral movement reflects the festively joyous basic mood of the Whitsuntide period. The soprano aria (F major), which follows on without recitative, fits into its new text without difficulty. Transposition, soprano instead of bass timbre, and the tone colour of the oboe da caccia (in BWV 59 a violin) augment the latent dance character of the piece, which accords with the gently ecstatic accent of the text. An uncomplicated alto recitative leads to the second bible quotation, which is given to the “vox Christi” (bass) and is constructed as a grand, two-part E minor arioso above a quasi-ostinato bass. Ostinato bass mobility, constant repetition of the short text sections, tone-symbolic (“Ich gehe hin - und komme wieder”) and emotional (“rejoice”) tracing of the text details lend the movement in the precise centre of the cantata that especial importance which the biblical speech demands. The following tenor aria in the joyous parallel key of E minor, G major is completely marked by the “hurrying” figures of the highly virtuoso vocal parts and of the concertante first violin in the main section of the unusually extended da capo arrangement. At the same time the tone-symbolical figures of Christ s “Gehen” (going) and “Kommen” (coming) are taken up once more from the preceding aria. The third bible quotation - as a short but very emphatically declaimed accompagnato of the vox Christi - leads on to the alto aria (C major), a splendidly virtuoso, thrilling movement, the martial signal motifs of which evidently on the one hand were inspired by the image of “hellish chains”, and on the other by the idea of Christ’s victorious struggle against the princes of hell. Effectively contrasting with this battle and victory music is the quite simple choral movement with which the work closes. “Die Elenden sollen essen” (BWV 75), for the first Sunday after trinity, was Bach’s first Leipzig cantata: “On the 30th of the same month (1723) ... the new cantor Colegii Musici Director Herr Joh. Sebastian Bach, who came here from the princely court in Cöthen, performed his first music to good applause”, the “Acta Lipsiensium academica” reported. The fact that this first music by the new Thomas cantor was also a “social event” (Alfred Dürr) is clear enough from the extent and extravagance of the composition. The text is constructed similarly to a sermon: the introductory psalm verse exemplifies the basic idea of the Sunday gospel dealing with the rich man and poor Lazarus. Recitatives, arias and chorale verse of the first section construe this concept further and in various directions, while the second section gives the contrast between poverty and wealth the allegorical turn indicating that true wealth is the christian faith in Jesus. It is apparent everywhere that Bach’s exegetic and compositional ambition goes even beyond this plan. The intellectual and formal related points of the composition are psalm verse and chorale: the former in the marvellous opening chorus constructed on the prelude and fugue pattern (and at the same time, particularly in the pathos-laden dotted rhythms of the beginning, hinting at the French overture); the latter in the just as broadly based polyphonic, concertante choral arrangement of “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan”. The first and last verses of this arrangement are performed as the concluding pieces of the first and second sections, while the sinfonia to the second section is nothing else but an instrumental arrangement of the same chorale with the melody in the solo trumpet. Grouped between these supporting pillars of the edifice are the recitatives and arias in regular alternation and with artistically proportioned graduations of the compositional media: large-scale accompagnato and tonally emphasised tenor aria, secco and soprano aria with concertante oboe d’amore (followed by secco as transition to the corale); in the second section large-scale accompagnato and alto aria with unison accompaniment of the violins, then secco and bass aria with full string setting and concertante trumpet (followed again by secco as the bridge to the final chorus). The tenor and alto aria, which directly address Jesus, are free as regards theme; the soprano and bass arias, which from the point of view of content are more closely related to the choral maxim “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan”, allude to the beginning of the choral melody in their first notes. Finally the uniform first person form of speech of the aria texts (as opposed to the general sentences of the recitatives) appears to have given Bach the impulse to incorporate fashionable, so to speak “subjective” musical accents in the spiritualised sermon tone of the work. This is apparent in the markedly song-like style of the vocal parts and the polonaise tone of the tenor aria, in the minuet tone of the soprano aria, in the passepied accent of the alto aria and in the bass aria’s style of warlike and triumphant opera music. The “good applause” for the cantata was perhaps due not least of all to such “fashionable” accents; that they do not appear to be superimposed upon the work, but open up an additional dimension of its extraordinarily rich and varied textual exegesis is responsible to a large extent for its greatness.