Suzuki Dvd

Zigeunerweisen, from Japanese B-movie auteur Seijun Suzuki, was his self-funded return to moviemaking after a long hiatus. This film was the first of what would later be known as the Taisho Trilogy. This series of movies is set during Japan's Taisho period, a time in the 1920s and 30s similar to America's Roaring Twenties. The title refers to a haunting classical violin piece with a famous recording error. This movie is the story of a love triangle between Aochi, a professor of German, Nakasago, his nomadic colleague, and Sono, the object of the two men's affections. Throughout the course of the story, Nakasago goes on several excursions, leaving his wife and child behind to await his return. While on one of Nakasago's tours, Aochi and Nakasago sleep with each other's wives. These infidelities cause both men to reevaluate themselves and their relationships with the women they love.

Branded to Kill, the wildly perverse story of the yakuza’s rice-sniffing “No. 3 Killer,” is Seijun Suzuki at his delirious best. From a cookie-cutter studio script, Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece—and was promptly fired.

Set in a 1920s Japan, at a time when rapid modernization broke the bonds of tradition and set the stage for the Japanese militarism of the 30s, these independent productions allowed Suzuki’s penchant for stunning visuals, and unconventional narratives to reach new creative heights. Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy is cinema at it’s most fantastic and bizarre, and are now regarded are as undisputed masterpieces of world cinema.

Listeners who already know Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan from their recordings of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, violin concertos, cantatas, and Passions will know what to expect from their recording of Bach's overtures. For those listeners unfamiliar with Suzuki and the BCJ, what they can expect is bright, light, lively, and loving performances of superior virtuosity and impeccable lucidity.

Unlike those of his teacher Ton Koopman, these organ recordings by Japanese Bach specialist Masaaki Suzuki can easily be connected to his conducting style, and admirers of the transparent, precise readings of his ongoing Bach cantata cycle will find this magnificently recorded disc of Buxtehude's organ music a valuable complement. The unusual pair of organs featured, both of them from the North German organ heartland, combine with a superb program, avoiding the few familiar Buxtehude organ hits, to produce an entirely distinctive Buxtehude release, aided by top-notch engineering.

Disc No. 34 in Suzuki’s series of Bach cantatas brings him well over halfway through the list. Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (BWV 1) is one of the more familiar works, first recorded by Karl Ristenpart for Archiv in mono, while the other two first appeared in the early stereo era under Wolfgang Gönnenwein and Karl Richter. All three were part of Bach’s 1725 cycle of chorale cantatas that were based on hymns, a cycle that ended incomplete with BWV 1. The opening and closing chorales in this work are Philipp Nicolai’s hymn (set to a medieval text) and make a splendid effect, a deliberate choice to lead off the published collected works.

Bach's motets have been very lucky on disc. This latest version from Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan is as good as it gets. In addition to the canonic six pieces, BWV 225-230, we also get the much more rarely heard Ich lasse dich nicht BWV Anh. 159, and O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht BWV 118. This brings the playing time of the disc up to more than 75 minutes, and may well prove important to Bach collectors. The singing is uniformly excellent, the small choir and soloists seemingly perfectly scaled to give the more complex pieces, Jesu, meine Freude in particular, plenty of contrast without any cost of contrapuntal clarity.