Hunt Lieberson brings intensity to Bach cantatas

Joshua Kosman

BACH
Cantatas 82 and 199 Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano; the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music; Craig Smith, conductor; Nonesuch

No one in the Bay Area needs to be persuaded or even reminded about the glories of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's singing -- the incredible tonal richness and technical command that are at her disposal, her probing interpretive intelligence, and most of all, the almost unnerving emotional and psychological intensity she brings to everything she performs, from Baroque to contemporary repertoire.

But even granting all that, there is something startlingly deep and affecting about this new recording of Bach's Cantatas 82 and 199. The performance stems from a staged production directed by Peter Sellars, in which the themes of faith, death and redemption were made graphically direct by placing the performance in the terminal ward of a hospital.

The idea sounds gimmicky, though it may well have worked onstage. But there's no mistaking the musical eloquence or theatrical flair of Hunt Lieberson's performance here. She delivers Bach's arias with an uncanny blend of technical rigor and communicative transparency, so that the listener hears not only the surface grandeur but also the confluence of theology and emotion that underlies the music.

Boston conductor Craig Smith, who has devoted extraordinary care and attention to the cantatas during the past three decades, makes an exemplary collaborator. His tempos are firm but flexible, particularly in the recitatives, and he provides a strong backbone to the performance without upstaging Hunt Lieberson. The results are dazzling.