The same goes for Bach's wonderful Coffee Cantata. It's such a tuneful, lighthearted, magical piece, that one cannot but listen to it twice in one sitting. So....in order to accommodate that desire for good coffee, here are two rather interesting, and possibly pathbreaking performances.
The first rendition comes from an Allegro release c. 1952 or so and it is unique for it is quite minimalistic for its day. The Allegro Chamber Ensemble is a 1/2 dozen of New York's finest and the soloists are Met house singers. I've never heard the coffee cantata performed with such a sense of intimacy, almost like parlor music. The down, admittedly, is that the recording sounds like it was recorded in my kitchen and there are some pitch problems, I believe on the engineering side. I've been playing with Audacity in order to improve postings but this vinyl had many challenges as you will hear from time to time. My friend Buster of the Big 10 Inch blog commented once on Remington vinyl (hoo boy!) but these Allegro pressings that I've seen may be more of an "oi veh!"
The second recording comes from Vox and is conducted by Rolf Reinhardt. Maestro Reinhardt was kind of a house conductor for Vox during the 50's and 60's and he recorded a lot of music from Baroque to Bartok. He is quite convincing in Bach and his Sturttgart orchestra is more of what we are accustomed to hearing as accompaniment in the Coffee Cantata. The singers are unknown to me. Vox would replace this performance with one from Wurttemberg sometime in the late 60's I believe.
I've included notes in the files. Brew up a fresh pot of Joe and enjoy the light side of old J S!
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