The genesis of Bach's great Reformation cantata, Ein feste Burg goes back to 1715 when it was performed at Weimar during Lent. At Leipzig Bach revised the work adding two new movements and replacing the concluding chorale with a new one. But sometime after his father's death in 1750, Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, made alterations to the cantata which drastically affected the character of its first and fifth sections. Here, W. F. Bach added three trumpets and a kettledrum to his father's own orchestra of oboes, strings and continuo. It is this version which Karl Munchinger has chosen to perform which is, perhaps, a pity since the original scoring does not require this king of inflation to be effective. Having said that, however, I must concede that Munchinger, his soloists, his choir and orchestra turn in a performance which captures splendidly those very sonorities for which W. F. Bach sought. There is some fine obbligato playing to match the strong solo contributions and the choral singing is fresh-sounding and assured. Sometimes, as in the opening chorus, I found the choral approach a little unyielding but elsewhere it was convincing. Both the duets are too slow for me and overladen with sentiment, but they are, all the same, very well executed.
Having found some of Munchinger's tempos very much on the slow side in No. 80, I was surprised to find that, unlike so many conductors, he takes the thrilling opening chorus of Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme at a splendidly effective pace. This is a late cantata which Bach performed in 1731 on one of the rare occasions when there was a 27th Sunday after Trinity. As before, the choral and instrumental contributions are strong ones; but also, as before, I found the tempos of the duets (soprano and bass) too slow. Stylistically, these are old fashioned performances which take little if any notice of advances made in our understanding of baroque performing practice. But they are, none the less, fine performances in their own right, which on occasion reveal insights to Bach's music which are frequently missing in more 'up-to-date' interpretations. Munchinger is no novice in the field of Bach performance and his St Matthew Passion on LP has held an uppermost place in the recorded catalogue for some 20 years or so. His readings of theses cantatas are somewhat on those lines and of that calibre. Anyone afraid of being other than abreast of the latest fashion will do well to avoid this release, but lovers of Bach who recognize that there is neither a single nor a correct way of performing a piece of music will find things to enjoy here. Full cantata texts enclosed, exemplary pressings and a notably fine recorded sound on LP and CD.'