Oberlin

When we listen to the Baroque mastery of J.S. Bach, we tend to feel a sense of humility, or even surrender at its most stirring moments. He performed and wrote music to God's glory, as both a church organist and a composer motivated more by sublime design than emotional conflict.

Despite the ways in which his melodies tend to spin and harmonies tumble, there is an irrefutable, almost molecular purity in his compositions that no other composer achieves. He is at once a self-consumed humanist obsessed with refining his product (and, on this CD, with the existential questions of love and death) and a God-fearing man constantly giving his work away to the heavens.

One detects this duality on Morimur, featuring the male vocal quartet The Hilliard Ensemble and Baroque violinist Christophe Poppen. We are acoustically transported back to the church, but the content of what we hear is cutting edge. It's a project conceived by German musicologist Elga Thoene, who suggested that the Chaconne for solo violin comprises themes from his choral works, the texts of which contain hidden eulogies to his wife, Anna Magdalena.

The album's tracks alternate between Partita #2 in d minor and Christ Lag in Todes Banden ("Christ Lay in Death's Bonds") for four voices, portraying Bach as secular and declarative, then devout and deeply reflective, respectively. The last track is Thoene's concoction: The Partita's immense Ciaccona injected with fragments from Christ Lag in Todes Banden wherever she saw the links between music and text.

Poppen is unapologetic for his historic instrument and bow, playing with self-assured grace. Detail comes across better than it would on a modern violin - Poppen always discerns melody from harmony, and though he regularly stretches rhythm, this functions the way an ornament would, never impinging on Bach's compositional discipline, without contriving emotion. The tone has a spoken quality and sharp edges, especially during fast passages, which a lot of violinists today would be afraid to make. Poppen transports us to another time.

The Hilliards often lose the bigger picture, using too much tenuto and occasional vibrato that degrades the pious sound world. But perhaps that's because they don't have enough substantial music to sink their teeth into: the length of the choral fragments is poppy seed against the bread-and-butter of the full Partita.

The breathtaking premiere of "Ciaconna & Choral Fragments" views them simultaneously, like a double exposure photograph. The voices give a sense of infinite line, and though this may have a strange soothing effect the often-manic violin, it adds to the spectral sense of awe at the root of the composition. The timbre of each violin string weds the timbre of each voice part. Again, hats off to Poppen.

Listening to Bach can feel like butting in on an intimate experience. There's a sense of private confession in each number, almost like he never intended it to be played, much less venerated and applauded around the world for centuries to come. Thoene's proposal is bold because it begins a dialogue with Bach, whose absolutist style refuses questioning. Morimur exposes him as a man who may have been possessed by a lot more than just fear of the Lord on High.