The Sunday Times

SDG 153 - Bach Cantatas vol. 20 (27 May 2009)

These half-dozen cantatas, performed live in the course of the Monteverdi Choir’s millennium Bach pilgrimage, are for the feasts of Septuagesima and Sexagesima. Miah Persson is a clear-voiced soprano soloist throughout Cantata 84 and in the delicious aria in Cantata 92; in the latter work, the tenor James Oxley and the violinist Maya Homburger relish a particularly dramatic piece. The compact, vividly illustrative Cantata 18 heralds the trio of Sexagesima works, and the trumpet-adorned Cantata 126 ends the group in bellicose brilliance. There’s nothing routine about this music, and nothing routine about these performances, either.