Carolyn Sampson Masaaki Suzuki

Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan made their first recording of the St Matthew Passion in March 1999. Twenty years later, in April 2019, it was time once again, as the singers and players gathered in the Concert Hall of the Saitama Arts Theater in Japan. ‘A profound joy’ is how Masaaki Suzuki describes his emotion at the opportunity to record Bach’s great fresco of Christ’s Passion for a second time. And this time, he and his ensemble have brought with them into the concert hall a profound and collective familiarity with Bach’s choral music, after having recorded more or less all of it in the meantime, including the complete sacred cantatas.

As the mysterious opening bars of the Kyrie gradually emerge into the light, we know that this recording of Mozart’s glorious Great Mass in C minor is a special one: the tempi perfect, the unfolding drama of the choral writing so carefully judged, and, above it all, the crystalline beauty of soloist Carolyn Sampson’s soprano, floating like a ministering angel. Masaaki Suzuki’s meticulous attention to detail, so rewarding in his remarkable Bach recordings, shines throughout this disc, the playing alert, the choir responsive, the soloists thrilling. And there is the bonus of an exhilarating Exsultate, Jubilate with Sampson on top form.

Only some twenty works out of what was originally a far greater number of secular cantatas have survived in performable condition. They nevertheless offer a welcome complement to our image of Bach the church musician, and reveal a composer who approached secular music with the same artistic integrity and demand for quality that we find in his sacred music.

Widely regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of Bach's music today, Masaaki Suzuki has made his name both as the artistic director of the Bach Collegium Japan and as a performer on the harpsichord and the organ. Much interest has been focussed on the BCJ/Suzuki series of Bach Cantatas, begun in 1995 and reaching its final stretch with the recent release of Volume 46 (of a projected 55 discs). Hailed by the international music press, this monumental undertaking has acquired a world-wide following. From the very beginning of the collaboration with BIS, however, there have been numerous recording projects beyond the sacred cantatas of Johannes Sebastian, and, indeed, beyond Bach himself. Some of these acclaimed recordings can now be found in a limited edition boxed set, released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Bach Collegium Japan this year.

The ongoing cantata cycle of Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan was initiated in 1995. The series has now reached its 40th volume, in the meantime receiving an astonishing number of distinctions from magazines and critics all over the world. But parallell to their cantata cycle, Suzuki and his Collegium have also recorded Bach’s larger-scaled choral works; recordings which have caught the imagination and attention of audiences and critics alike.

Pure delight: two of Britain’s most exciting singers together with one of the most vibrant of the English period bands, in a collection of wonderful duets from Händel’s English oratorios and odes. Both Carolyn Sampson and Robin Blaze collaborate with Masaaki Suzuki in his recordings of Bach Cantatas, for which they are receiving high praise. ‘Sampson's rounded, lyrical, glowing tone is just what I want to hear in the warm-hearted soprano cantata O holder Tag’ said the critic in International Record Review about BIS-CD-1411, whereas The Times, UK, has described Robin Blaze as being ‘blessed with a most alluring countertenor – creamy in tone, naturally expressive, exquisitely controlled…’.

Just over twenty secular cantatas by JS Bach have survived, and we know of almost thirty other cantatas that are now lost. The secular cantatas were almost all composed for some important, festive event in a family or in public, academic or political life. The present disc includes one of the most regularly performed of these works, the Coffee Cantata. This was written around 1734, probably for a performance at the Zimmermann Coffee House in Leipzig.
The disc opens with O holder Tag, a wedding cantata for solo soprano dated, in the version here performed, to 1741. (The piece was actually used in more or less modified form by Bach on at least five different occasions, from as early on as 1729.) The solo soprano, in her first BIS recording, is Carolyn Sampson who is one of the most exciting performers in her field today. A stunning introduction to the world of Bach's cantatas and to the incomparable Bach Collegium Japan directed by Masaaki Suzuki.

Although Bach's sacred cantatas span a huge expressive range and display a striking stylistic diversity, they were all composed for performance during a church service. In the case of the secular cantatas, on the other hand, their respective purpose is as varied as their subject matter and emotional content. They were usually commissions intended for occasions such as weddings, funerals and birthdays. As such they were sometimes performed in churches, and some of them have religious texts, but as the works gathered here exemplify, they were not related to the particular theme of the church service on a certain day.