Classics Reconsidered: Andreas Scholl’s 1997 recording of Bach cantatas
Mark Seow and Edward Breen revisit countertenor Andreas Scholl’s 1997 recording of Bach cantatas directed by Philippe Herreweghe
MS. Cantata No.170 nearly killed me. I had been rehearsing it as an undergraduate at Cambridge with Patrick Dunachie – the current first countertenor of The King’s Singers. Stepping out onto Trinity Street in a reverie, Bach’s seemingly boundless melody still ribboning through my head, I was almost hit by a bicycle. The pure tone and silky melisma of Andreas Scholl, not yet 30 years old when he recorded this in July 1997, surely captures this ‘Himmelseintracht’ – what a word! – with a potentially unsurpassed ease.
EB. My first contact with this particular recording was in London’s Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street where in 1998 I sought it out following a full-page advertisement which promised ‘This is the voice of the future’ (05/98). In those days there was a palpable hum of excitement over Andreas Scholl’s emergence concurrent with the peak of the early music boom and Cool Britannia. Heady times! After hearing Scholl alongside Maria Cristina Kiehr in Caldara’s Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo (it won him a second Gramophone award in 1997), I followed Nicholas Anderson's reviews eagerly; this solo Bach was a revelation but not a surprise, as it had been much anticipated. Soon after, Scholl appeared alongside James Bowman and Michael Chance on Melvyn Bragg’s TV docu-series The Southbank Show (LWT 1999) and thus he became the new falsettist pinup and signed to Decca.
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To read the full text of this article please visit Gramophone.co.uk (Awards issue 2025)
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