Bach: Christmas Cantatas from Leipzig (BWV 91, 121, 133, 63, Magnificat BWV 243a) /Herreweghe [Hybrid SACD] [SACD]

The four cantatas all open with choral movements based on Lutheran chorales. They are all lovely, and the early BWV63 is a real ear-catcher. Hereweghe's performances here of it, 121 and 133 are at least the equal of Gardiner's "pilgrimage" disc of a couple of years ago which coupled them with BWV 64. If you think you know the Magnificat, think again. This is the earlier version of BWV 243, numbered 243a and features four more verses than the later version as well as different instrumentation.

Instrumental ensemble is excellent, with special praise to the three oboists, who are a common denominator throughout the set (whereas both choir and orchestral membership changed significantly in the year between the two recordings).

Soloists in common are the always reliable Ingeborg Danz and Mark Padmore. Dorthee Blotzky-Mields, the soprano on the first disc, was a new name to me but she has a fine young voice that just needs more experience before she can quite match Carolyn Sampson, who appears on the second disc to splendid, indeed riveting, effect (as ever). Both basses, Kooy and Noack, are Herreweghe regulars. In the whole two hours of music, the only weak moment was some dodgy intonation from the duetting tenor and soprano in the "et misericordia" of the Magnificat but it's a very minor and short-lived slip in a sea of excellence.

The sound is good without being excellent. Three gripes. The first is that although these are recent recordings they don't sound like DSD. They're forthright and vivid and certainly good, but there's a feeling of constraint. Bass notes, for example, reverberate with a short decay time rather than really resonate. The second gripe is part of the reason for that: the miking is a shade too close, particularly on the soloists. It's not as bad as some recordings but listening to two discs in sequence does generate listener fatigue due to the immediacy of the sound and the lack of space and air around it. The easy and obvious solution, of course, is to listen to one at a time, but it's still a fault.

And finally, I don't know why H-M bothers to claim that their SACDs are multi-channel when the rear channels are artificially generated and add almost nothing to the overall sound. If you're not going to record for multi-channel then release the damned thing in stereo and at least be honest about it and its provenance. Personally, I would have loved to have heard this Magnificat in genuine surround sound and I feel a bit cheated. I don't mean to imply that the sound is bad, - it's definitely not, and it can be quite thrilling in loud passages and rewarding in intimate ones. It's just that the music and performances deserved more air and bloom and resonance (especially around solo voices, percussion and brass) and the discs should deliver what it says on the can ("multi-channel"). Despite my gripes, these discs are well worth a couple of hours of anyone's time, especially at the very reasonable prices they can be found for.