Bach obligingly made several versions of his Leipzig cantata Ich habe genug to accommodate not only the baritone voice, with which the piece is usually associated, but also the soprano and mezzo-soprano voices, too. Thus French contralto Nathalie Stutzmann has appropriated it for her recital with propriety. The two remaining solo cantatas on the disc, Nos. 54 and 170, belong respectively to Bach’s Weimar and Leipzig periods.
Some readers may find Stutzmann’s voice too plummy for this music, especially now that our ears have become so accustomed to performances by falsettists and scaled-down mezzo-soprano or contralto voices. Yet, for the most part she is commendably on her guard against indulgent gestures which might be considered to get in the way of direct communication between music and listener. Indeed, it was only in Vergnugte Ruh’ that I felt her stylistic approach at odds with the piece. Here the oft-practised swooping up and sometimes down to the correct notational destination blurs and dilutes the uncluttered poesy of Bach’s melodic line. In the other two cantatas the practice has largely been banished. Only in the sublime aria “Schlummert ein” (No. 82) does it occasionally return. The accompaniment here, by the way, is beautifully played by Anthony Robson on an oboe da caccia and not an oboe as stated in the booklet but which, indeed, Bach intended; he hit upon the oboe da caccia, a master-stroke, only in his last version of the piece when it once more became the property of a baritone.
Widerstehe doch der Sunde begins with an extraordinarily striking aria, governed by dissonance and diminished sevenths. Stutzmann sings it affectingly and with careful attention to the text; but the period strings of the Hanover Band underplay the startling boldness of Bach’s harmonic concept with softly spoken inflexions and mild gestures which greatly diminish the impact of both words and music.
In summary, this is a mixed success. There are features in each piece which make considerable appeal but I seldom felt that the performances sufficiently explored the expressive depths and nuances present in the music.'