The BWV 31, Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubiliert is one of Bach’s most puzzling cantatas. It is an Easter cantata and, as such, is supposed to be festive. And it does sound so at the beginning. First we have a truly uplifting sonata with the trinity trio of trumpets plus drums, followed by a grandiose chorus in the same spirit with exuberant fugal passages and laugh-like melisme on the word “lacht” (laughs) and giggling-like divisions on “jubiliert” (celebrates). The text vaunts Christ’s triumph over death. In a recitative with an almost graphic text (blood spatters included), the bass speaks of Jesus as a hero, a prince in reverential dotted rhythm. And suddenly the mood changes. The tenor tells us in a lilting melody accompanied by strings only that we must let the old man in ourselves, marked by the original sin, die and let the man of the new covenant be born in us. And then the soprano comes in an ecstatic high-lying aria with oboe obligato (in what is supposed to be Bach’s last version arranged in his Leipzig years) to share with us that she cannot wait for the moment of her death in order for her to join Christ in his glory. The trumpets in the serene closing chorale about the joys of eternal life almost sound like an afterthought.
Tô be honest, I had never quite really “gotten” that cantata until this evening, when guest speaker Christine Blanken, a musicologist and researcher in the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, reminded the audience that the cantata was premiered in Weimar in 1715 in very particular circumstances. Although the occasion demanded a joyous cantata, the young Prince Johann Ernst, a composer himself who even played with Bach in court concerts, had been seriously ill for a long while. At that point, it was clear he wouldn’t live long, although nobody, especially his mother, was ready to accept the fact, probably not even Bach himself. This means that it was probably difficult to get in full celebratory mode then. The prince did die a couple of months later. Music was then banned from the court, and Bach wouldn’t be allowed to complete his series of cantata for the year.
Because of its ambiguous nature, this cantata is especially challenging for performers. I’ve listened to Suzuki, Gardiner and Koopman, and I don’t think that any of them was capable to render all facets of this score with consistent success. Then I discovered Raphaël Pichon’s video from Paris with his Ensemble Pygmalion. I still find his chorus below the competition in terms of clarity of enunciation, but a conductor raised in the tradition of the concert spirituel has an instinctive and immediate grasp of music making at once solemn, profound… and graceful.
For instance, even if conductor Rudolf Lutz and the J.S Bach Stiftung orchestra did manage to produce a palpable sense of animation in the opening numbers, they also sounded quite rough, even awkward in the case of the sonata. In the first performance, it sounded downright poorly synched. The repeat after Mrs. Blanken’s speech fared far better, but the problem of wayward trumpets remained. Although the chorus sounded a bit unbalanced towards soprano and altos (who also outnumbered the tenors and basses) , its singing of the “laughing” chorus was simply ideal in its clear articulation. Most important, the number has moments when the chorus has to underline the key slogan-like verses of the text almost as in a TV advertisement: “the creator lives!”, “heaven laughs!” – and these singers couldn’t have done it better.
The single number I don’t really like in Pichon’s video is the bass aria, for the organ’s decoration are a bit overdone for my taste. Here Mr. Lutz and his organist offered something more effective and sober. The “solemn” continuo is always a bit tough, for it usually sounds rather heavy and ungainly. This evening it created a somewhat “athletic” impression that fits the text description of Christ as a hero. In it, Stephan McLeod lacked the last ounce of focus and at times simply lacked tone. He managed the florid writing smoothly. However, if you had Peter Kooij’s full- and dark-toned singing in Suzuki’s recording in your memory, you’d have missed the true impact this aria can produce.
I was anxious to see tenor Bernhard Berchtold, whose singing in the J.S. Bach-Stiftung videos is just awesome. So you can imagine how frustrated I was on hearing that he was replaced in the last minute. In any case, Florian Siever, lighter yet sweeter in tone, sang very well, caressing his lines ideally. Although she made a mistake in the second time, Julia Doyle’s first account of the aria was absolutely lovely. I don’t recall having heard the aria sung with such smooth legato, the difficult intervals handled with absolute homogeneity, her middle register appealing and the overall interpretation convincing in its longing. It’s just a pity that the oboist’s solo was more expressive the second time (which probably won’t be make into the final video).
I HEAR VOICES 
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