Dieterich Buxtehude, Opera Omnia, Ton Koopman et al (Challenge Classics)It isn't going to get any better than this. From now on, it's surely downhill all the way.
29 CD's, one DVD and several booklets comprise Ton Koopman's account of the complete Buxtehude on which he plays organ, harpsichord and conducts the choir and ensembles. For me, it represents a summit in all those years of buying records that began with the 7 inch single of Mozart 40 in the respectful arrangement by Waldo de los Rios in 1971, through Lindisfarne, Steeleye Span, Beethoven symphonies, going into town to buy new Sex Pistols records unheard as soon as they were released, Chic, an extensive portfolio of Gregory Isaacs LP's and Al Green, the belated gathering of T. Rex luxury edition CD's, Sibelius symphonies, Handel, Bach, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Monteverdi, R.E.M., The Magnetic Fields and Motown and Northern Soul compilations. Don't talk to me about diversity.
I never expected to buy anything as lavish as this, though. Not until I realized that a disciplined approach to betting on horse racing could make it possible for money legitimately taken out of bookmakers to pay for such things.
As you can see from my photograph, the box set contains four sets of discs in colour-coded sleeves- the organ music, choral work, harpsichord music and chamber work, a booklet for each containing the sleeve notes from each separate release, a DVD and a book of 'lyrics'.How amusing would it be to begin by being critical. There is a typographical error on the box, which is disappointing when you'll be lucky to find this anywhere for less than £200, depending on how the pound stands with the Euro, (but it is generally much more than that) and do we really call the words to these cantatas 'lyrics'. Are they not the 'text'.
It was also disappointing to find that the DVD is about Ton Koopman and not Buxtehude, Lubeck in the late C17th and Lutheranism. With no disrespect to Ton, who is devoted to his work, it is Dietrich I'd prefer to know more about.
But, those minor points aside, the recording is sumptuous and spacious, as I discovered when going straight to the Trio Sonata in B flat, in Opus 1. The lute and continuo are higher in the mix than expected but can afford to be and the exuberance of the violin part can't be overshadowed by it.
It is not Buxtehude's fault that he lived ahead of Bach any more than one can blame Buddy Holly for not being Lennon and McCartney. Although there is a tremendous range of emotion and formal discipline to be found in this music, nobody is going to pretend that Buxtehude produced anything like the quality or quantity of the most complete artist yet to emerge from humanity but if we all need to be helped up by giants that preceded us then J.S. might not have done what he did without Dietrich's example to build on.
Best known in his lifetime as an organist, it is fitting that Ton Koopman is the instigator of this monumental account and there is much bright, spectacular music to be enjoyed on the five organ discs, rather than a choral music specialist even if there are seventeen in the 'vocal' section. But it is the choir pieces, with ensemble, that will leave the most lasting impression, and not for the extravagant glories of such baroque masters as Handel, who was Anglo-German but always affected by his early education in Italy, Vivaldi, or Scarlatti, in whose music is the sunnier climate of Southern Europe and the less inhibited Catholic urge to celebrate, but for a cooler, sparser demeanour of piety and devotion that comes with North German Protestant rigour and restraint. The long aftertaste of the Buxtehude cantata is that of the solo violin wandering, often lamenting, in and around the vocal line.
None of which is to suggest that Buxtehude is dour. The light and redemption is more earned than assumed, though, and the darkness more guardedly contemplated than made as sensual as Monteverdi, so gorgeously, does. The organ music is similarly at least as memorable when demonstrating that not everything that is best about church organs is the swelling, all stops out, magnificence of those famous bits by Widor or Bach's Toccata and Fugue. There are other, quieter performances available to the organist beyond the trumpet sound and wall-blasting capability.
Best known among this ostensibly lesser-known composer's works are the cantatas, Membra Jesu Nostri; the harpsichord variations, La Capricciosa, and, naturally, the organ works that are a part of the repertoire for any worthwhile church organist but the advantage of the complete works is that it is egalitarian in giving everything the space it requires with nothing either emphasized as 'top of the bill' or hidden away. The chamber music is not what he might have been known for but is wonderfully inventive, suggests a personality within the baroque style and is by no means the only place that one has a sense of Buxtehude as immense good fun, taking us by surprise, and, as I'm sure we would all like to be, alive in his work more than three hundred years after the fact.
There will be plenty more to say. I haven't actually listened to all 29 discs yet but a few have already been played more than once. One big undertaking will be the Top 6 Buxtehude, reviving this website's old feature, with no excuses for missing anything because it is all here.
So, thank you to all the horses that paid for this treasured possession. They not only paid for it but compensated for the disastrous gambling losses on the referendum and the American election, where the complacency of the political classes and the failure of the assumed liberal majority to get up and stand up let in the likes of Farage and Trump. Be that as it may, it's going to take those hooligans a while before they can ruin things like this.