Jumping from
Mozart on Deutsche Grammophon to
Bach on Decca, oboist
Albrecht Mayer continues to explore transcriptions as well as works originally for his instrument on
Voices of Bach. This is a good and necessary thing since neither
Mozart nor
Bach wrote a sufficient number of works for the oboe to fill out a single disc. In the case of
Bach,
Mayer has hit on the ingenious solution of including not just
Bach's canonical Oboe Concerto, plus his concertos for oboe d'amore and English horn, but also eight arrangements of well-known chorales for chorus and oboe. This serves the dual tasks of keeping the program interesting for the listener and challenging for
Mayer, and it works brilliantly. With his apparently effortless virtuoso technique and his pungent but poignant tone,
Mayer turns in soulful and stylish performances of the three concertos, plus sweetly spiritualized accounts of the chorales. The
English Concert, the excellent English-based Baroque period orchestra, and
Trinity Baroque, a very small but quite superb chorus, support
Mayer's solos with graceful but heartfelt accompaniments, and Decca captures them in clean, warm, and open digital sound.