The BWV 153 , Schau, lieber Gott, wie meine Feinde is a curious entry in the corpus of Bach cantatas. It was intended for the Sunday after New Year, January 2nd 1724. Bach’s musicians had been really busy in a tight performance schedule with demanding items since Christmas, and the composer’s practical mind couldn’t help but take that into consideration. The cantata requires only a string orchestra, there is no soprano solo and the chorus is not required to sing complex counterpoint, what requires less rehearsal time. On a structural level, Bach’s invention seemed to have used the very sparseness as a rhetorical tool.
The text of the cantata basically says “Lord, my enemies are too many, and I’m unable to fight them without help”. Yes, the musical forces reduced to the minimum, there are no special features. This is a “real life” cantata. The opening number isn’t formidable in any way. It doesn’t look like any miracle is going to happen. No wonder the alto sounds so desperate in his recitative – “I live among lions and dragons who’ll soon finish me off”. Predictably God responds in the bass voice. And yet the answer is not solemn at all – in a seductive, dance-like aria, he says “no need to fear, I’m already here”. If you think about it, this is a rather unsettling answer. It basically means that the Christian soul actually is BLIND to the presence of God. It says “I live with dragons and lions” – and God gives a nudge “Look again”. This has the effect of making the Christian soul sing one register lower, in the tenor voice. In the second recitative, it acknowledges God’s presence “yes, you give me solace etc, but the stuff here is really serious – I live in hell”. Time for a lesson – the chorale reminds him “Not even the Devil himself could defeat God”.
After the second wake-up call, the tenor seems to have gotten the memo. Even with his string-only orchestra, he makes a brave statement in an aria that could have been written by Vivaldi, with tempestuous passagework in the strings and illustrative coloratura. We go one step lower in register for the next recitative, when the Christian soul now speaks with the same register used for the voice of God. Now the Christian soul is in full harmony with God: as much as Jesus has carried the cross, it is up to everyone to carry his or her own cross with the belief that God has never abandoned him or her. Once the voice has been “internalized”, we hear the Christian soul sing the cantata’s last aria in his own original alto voice. Now that the full cycle has been completed, it sings with the same dance-like serenity we heard in God’s voice in the cantata’s first aria as an expression of the determination of facing adversity with spiritual confidence.
With the exception of John Eliot Gardiner’s expressionistic recording, conductors tend to build on the mature graciousness of Bach’s writing, the change of atmosphere in the tenor aria being its coup de théâtre. Maestro Rudolf Lutz is no different, offering a warm account of this score in relaxed tempi, extensive use of decoration and short introductions and interventions by the organ and a curious rendition of the middle verse of the last chorale by the soloists (plus a soprano borrowed from the chorus).
Jan Börner sang the alto solos with admirable clarity of tone but his account of the spiritual Angst in the first part of the cantata was a bit too chic for the circumstances. The contrast to Daniel Johannsen couldn’t be more evident. Witt his customary verbal acuity, he employed a large dynamic and tonal palette to depict the spiritual torments in the tenor recitative and proved to be in excellent, incisive voice in an heroic account of the difficult “tempest” aria. Most tenors fight with the consonants and difficult vowels in the text, but Mr Johannsen sounded unfazed. Bass Sebastian Noack seems to have tried to boost the roundness and color to match the sound of God’s voice with the price of occasional tremulousness.
I HEAR VOICES 
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