Ton And

This twenty-second and last volume of cantata recordings contains two of Bach's latest cantatas (BWV 30 and 80), including the secular model for BWV 30 and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's arrangement of two movements from BWV 80 dating from after 1750. Also included are the four Kyrie-Gloria masses of the late 1730s; they are very closely associated with the cantata repertoire of the 1720s. These masses are based on selected movements of cantatas dating from the period 1723-6; after an interval of ten or so years Bach reworked them, in most cases very thoroughly. Renowned Bach specialist Ton Koopman (1944) was awarded the 2006 Bach Medal by the city of Leipzig 05 Jun 2006, the final day of this year's annual Leipzig Bach Festival.

The marvellous Ton Koopman plays Bach's complete works for organ in wonderful performances full of power, passion, and grace! These digital recordings were made in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, and 1999.

Although Ton Koopman's fine Bach cantata series, begun in the mid-1990s, was abandoned by Warner Classics/Erato in 2001, the conductor managed to resume the 22-volume edition's issue through his own label, Antoine Marchand (a sub-label of Challenge Classics). And while distribution in the U.S. hasn't always been steady, that question seems to be resolved and we can expect to enjoy the remaining volumes as they appear over the next few years. This Volume 2 is by no means a "new release", but since Classicstoday.com last visited the series in June, 2003, with a review of Volume 1 (type Q6613 in Search Reviews), we thought we'd pick up where we left off. As collectors of these cantatas already know, Koopman initially released 12 of the 22 volumes with Erato, so if you already own any of these, you don't need to consider the Challenge Classics versions since they are identical...

–David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Ton Koopman is not only one of the great fathers of the Baroque-Renaissance revival in the 1970’s, but a true pioneer of our time. After completing the Bach Cantatas survey, was he awarded the Bach Prize 2014 by the Royal Academy of Music. The prize is awarded to outstanding individuals in the performance and scholarship of Bach’s music and none could be more worthy than Koopman, who has been noted as doing ”remarkable work promoting Bach’s music in the last thirty or so years.”

Sometime in late 1705 or 1706 Georg Friedrich Händel, like many German composers before him, travelled to Italy, then the fountainhead of European music. During the next three years he paid extended visits to Rome and also spent time in Florence, Venice and Naples. In 1709-10, perhaps after a year back in Hamburg, he returned once again to Florence and Venice. Rather than studying with some Italian master, as others had done, he quickly established himself as a virtuoso performer and composer, enjoying the support of leading patrons and composing numerous cantatas.

You might not expect the figure of Mary to have called forth exceptional music from the Protestant Bach, but the Marian feast days survived the Lutheran paring of the Catholic calendar, and at least the first two of these three cantatas are imposing works. Best of all is the opening chorale of the Cantata No. 1, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern," BWV 1 (How brightly shines the morning star). This work, despite its numbering, was actually the last in the series of cyclical chorale cantatas Bach wrote in 1724 and 1725. The eight-minute opening chorale, a gloriously broad design for chorus, horns, strings, and a pair of oboes da caccia, bears affinities with the warm, generous chorales of the contemporaneous St. John Passion.

This album attempt to show how Leopold Mozart could have influenced his well-known son Wolfgang Amadeus by placing the most famous works of Leopold Mozart against the early works of Wolfgang Amadeus. These works are performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra led by Ton Koopman, and Tini Mathot on pianoforte. One side note, while Die Bauernhochzeit and Cassatio ex ("toy symphony") are considered to be works by Leopold Mozart by the creators of this album, others argue the "toy symphony" must have been composed by Joseph Haydn or Edmund Angerer. There is little consensus within the musicological debate.

One of the seemingly endless possibilities for programming Bach's cantatas, this 2008 Antoine Marchand disc drawn from Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir's survey of the complete surviving cantatas joins five works featuring either alto or tenor soloists. The first two works here feature Polish alto Bogna Bartosz, the third German alto Andreas Scholl, the fourth German tenor Christoph Prégardien, and the fifth – a single aria for an unspecified occasion – Bartosz again. As in all Koopman's Bach recordings, these are always entirely successful if not entirely predictable performances. Organist Koopman is a canny Bach conductor, leading performances from the keyboard that combines both the spirituality and humanity of Bach's music.