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Artist: Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
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J.S. Bach: Various

Just a few short weeks after their 19th residency at the Klang und Raum Festival in Germany and the official launch of their 2011-12 season in Toronto, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra once again turns to Johann Sebastian Bach, with an album featuring two cantatas for solo alto (sung here by countertenor Daniel Taylor), a concerto for oboe and violin (performed by John Abberger and Jeanne Lamon), and a suite for violin and strings (performed by Jeanne Lamon).

Johann Sebastian Bach composed a dozen church cantatas for a single solo voice, including four for alto. Cantata 54, one of Bach's early ones, was composed in Weimar, where Bach was employed as court organist and chamber musician. Cantata 170 dates from Bach's third annual cycle of cantatas written as Kapellmeister of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, and is the first in a series of cantatas written at this time that feature the organ in a solo role. 

Among Bach's instrumental works are several that attest to his frequent re-use of entire works in different settings, adapting them to circumstances. Basing their work on this knowledge, musicologists and musicians set about restoring the presumably lost predecessor to the Concerto in C Minor, BWV 1060. The contrasting nature of the two solo harpsichord parts leads one to assume that the original was scored for two different solo instruments: an oboe and a violin. 

The Second Orchestral Suite existed first in A Minor, a tone lower than the extant version in B Minor. The latter is scored for solo flute and strings, but the flute is precluded in the A-Minor version because it falls out of the range of the instrument, though making the violin a logical substitute. The suite is the most French in style of the four and the only one that features a solo instrument.