Shigeyoshi Suzuki

A killer record from the Japanese scene of the 70s - one that begins with a funky drum break, then only gets better and better as things move on! Hiromasa Suzuki plays plenty of sweet keyboards on the record - at a level that's definitely influenced by Herbie Hancock's work from the time, but which also brings in some of the best funky currents of Japanese soundtrack material - so that there's a blend of electric jazz with some great crime/cop movie modes too - served up with some nice saxophone solos from Takeru Muraoka on a few tracks, and tenor from Mabumi Yamaguchi on the rest.

Listening to this irresistibly joyful and magnificently musical set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites, one is immediately struck by two thoughts. First, Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan have been wasting their time concentrating on Bach's dour cantatas, and second, Bach himself was wasting his time writing his melancholy church music when he could have been composing infinitely more cheerful secular music. While Suzuki and his crew have turned in superlatively performed, if spectacularly severe recording of the cantatas, they sound just as virtuosic and vastly more comfortable here.

Listeners familiar with other recordings in Masaaki Suzuki's ongoing traversal of Bach's solo keyboard works may find his performances of the Partitas somewhat of an anomaly. For instance, the sharply delineated juxtapositions of tempos that made his Fantasias and Fugues program so thrilling (type Q3840 in Search Reviews) are nowhere to be heard here. The interpretive agenda this time is much subtler and decidedly more introverted.