Iestyn Davies is marvellously expressive in Bach’s Cantatas Nos 35 and 169

How did Bach’s cantatas sound at their first performances? Despite a wealth of research there are still many unknowns, including how boy soloists in the choirs of that time would have fared in some of his most challenging vocal music.

Some recordings have used treble and alto boy soloists in the cantatas, but the fashionable performers for the alto solos these days tend to be countertenors. Iestyn Davies is following in well-trodden footsteps in this new disc featuring two of Bach’s solo cantatas — Gott soll allein mein Herze haben, BWV 169, and Geist und Seele wird verwirret, BWV 35 — together with shorter fillers by Schütz and Buxtehude.

The solo cantatas make fine showpieces for singers schooled in the Baroque style, as Davies is. What makes these two different is that they also contain elaborate parts for a solo organist, who would almost certainly have been Bach himself.

They are to the fore here, not least because the speeds set by conductor Jonathan Cohen and his lively ensemble Arcangelo are swift and joyous. Organist Tom Foster finds himself nipping about the keyboard with an athlete’s nimble agility.

Davies is marvellously expressive as always. In terms of purity of sound he falls a whisker short of Andreas Scholl, a rival on disc, but Davies uses words and vocal colour to the maximum in music where Bach is at his most richly emotional. The companion works are Schütz’s brief Erbarm dich mein, O herre Gott and Buxtehude’s mournful Klag-Lied, a homage to his father.

★★★★☆

‘J S Bach: Cantatas Nos 35 and 169’ is released by Hyperion