Ton And

The fourth volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas completes the series of secular cantatas from the composer's years in Leipzig. Seven works are involved here, spanning a period from 1725 to1742, the year of Bach's final secular cantata, BWV 212. Of Bach's occasional compositions, some fifty secular pieces have survived, yet these represent no more than a fraction of what must once have existed. Bach's secular cantatas cover a period of almost exactly three decades.

The sixth volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas inaugurates the long series of sacred cantatas written during the composer's years in Leipzig. With a single exception, the cantatas included in the present release belong to the first annual cycle and date from 1723/24.The cycle begins with Cantatas 75 and 76, with which the recently installed Thomaskantor took up his new appointment in April 1723.

The fifth volume of our complete recording of Bach’s cantatas completes the series of secular cantatas from the composer’s years in Leipzig. Seven works are involved here, spanning a period from 1725 to 1742, the year of Bach’s final secular cantata, BWV 212. Of Bach’s occasional compositions, some fifty secular pieces have survived, yet these represent no more than a fraction of what must once have existed. Indeed, there is no other group of works by the composer that has suffered such great – and regrettable – losses. In the case of more than half of the works that are known to have existed, only the words, but not the music, survived. Quite how many pieces may have disappeared without leaving any trace whatsoever is impossible to say.

The Fitzwilliam Virginal book is one of the primary sources of keyboard music. The book, which is now housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, hails from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods in England. + This release features excerpts from the Fitzwilliam Virginal book from composers including Giovanni Picchi, Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, William Bird, and more. + Dutch conductor, organist, and harpsichordist Ton Koopman performs the works on this album. He was knighted in 2003, receiving the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and is currently a professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

Nieuw Vocaal Amsterdam is a classical voice training programme specialising in opera, accessible to all children and young people from 4 years old who enjoy singing. Its was founded in 2005, roughly ten years ago, and immediately after the idea to perform a Nativity play on a yearly basis arose. In these performances, all students would be performing simultaneously. Ton Koopman's arrangement of Christmas songs for the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra from a few years before were the starting point, musically. The first performance of the play was accompanied by only a piano, with angels, sheep and shepherds performing and singing alongside Mary and Joseph. It proved to be an immediate success, and thus it evolved into a full evening's entertainment.

Between 1999 and 2004 conductor, musicologist, organist and harpsichordist, Ton Koopman recorded the complete cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, which he founded in 1979. This 2-CD volume contains a selection of Highlights from the award winning 22-volume series of the Complete Cantatas. The inlay contains an additional listing of all cantatas in order of BWV-numbers, referring to the volumes of the complete series. The soloists featured are sopranos Sandrine Piau, Elisabeth von Magnus, Johannette Zomer, Lisa Larsson, and Anne Grimm; altos Bogna Bartosz and Annette Markert; Tenors Christoph Prégardien and Paul Agnew; and Bass Klauss Mertens.

The tenth volume of the complete recording of Bach's cantatas contains a final group of works (BWV 44, 73, 119 and 134) from the first cycle of 1723-1724. It continues with the first of a substantial series of chorale cantatas that give the second Leipzig cycle of 1724-1725 its particular character. This volume ends with the serenata BWV 134a, which completes the secular cantatas in Volumes 1 to 3; it provided the musical model for the Easter cantata BWV 134, which was composed in 1724. Bach's commitment in composing this second cycle of cantatas went well beyond his undertaking in the previous year. Whereas in the first cycle, existing cantatas from the Weimar period could be found alongside new pieces, the second cycle contains a sequence of newly composed works that continued uninterrupted until the spring of 1725.

Like its two predecessors, the eighth volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas is devoted to the first annual cyle of Leipzig cantatas of 1723/24. In planning and implementing this cycle, Bach took upon himself a burden of work far in excess of anything he had earlier assumed — to say nothing of the creative and artistic challenges involved. Whereas his Weimar cantatas of 1714-16 had been written at regular monthly intervals, he now had four times as much work on his hands. In the circumstances, it is entirely understandable that, whenever possible, he fell back on existing works, especially those written in Weimar, although pieces composed were no less liable to be pillaged. These self-borrowings notwithstanding, the main emphasis none the less lay on the composition of new works, and the first cycle of cantatas that Bach wrote for Leipzig is notable for the number of new pieces that it contains.

Bach’s St. John Passion with a star-studded lineup of soprano Johennette Zomer, countertenor Andreas Scholl, tenor MLike Koopman's reading of the St Matthew Passion last year, this is an intimate, if occasionally idiosyncratic, account. His understanding and shaping of the structure of the work produce powerful results, while an intuitive sense of pacing means the more contemplative sections serve to heighten the main dramatic narrative, rather than interrupt it. Koopman also achieves a sensitive balance between voices and instruments, so that the solo singers become very much part of the contrapuntal texture, and the instrumental parts are given due focus.

Volume 17 in the Bach cantata series contains exclusively works from the third yearly cycle of cantatas from Leipzig, which, unlike the previous two Leipzig cycles, extends over a longer period of time, from June 1725 until 1727. The cantatas in this volume can be divided into three chronologically distinct groups: December-January 1725-26 (BWV 57, 32), September-October 1726 (BWV 35, 17, 19, 169 and 56) and January-February 1727 (BWV 58 and 84).