Johann Sebastian Bach 333

Deutsche Grammophon and Decca have announced the release of the largest and most complete box set ever devoted to the work of a single composer with Bach 333 – a 222 CD box set – which is released worldwide on 26 October in two language versions, English and German. The flagship Edition is accompanied by a 2CD entry level product, Peaceful Bach, and a suite of 13 digital products including all aimed at achieving the widest possible awareness and engagement. Listen to new recordings of rare jazz interpretations of Bach classics.

It is no surprise that Sir Simon would one day tackle this most comprehensive of Bach’s compositions in view of his much applauded interpretation of the St. John Passion in 2006. The Berliner Morgenpost wrote at the time: “A performance of this musical calibre renders superfluous all questions about authenticity and historical performance practice. At the Philharmonie Sir Simon Rattle and his orchestra performed the St. John Passion […] with highly concentrated and flawless beauty devoid of any distorting indulgence.”

Live concert in celebration of Loussier's 70th birthday. In performance in Bach's 'own' church, St Thomas's in Leipzig. A rare example of a commercially successful jazz artist. In fifteen years, the Jacquees Loussier trio sold over six million albums. Bonus feature: Jacques Loussier in Conversation…

My Bach Partitas: I got to know Johann Sebastian Bach before I started playing, with the Motets on an LP disc that I wore out listening to, and with a short passage from the St Matthew Passion that I sang while my father accompanied me on the piano. Bach has always been present in my musical life and has been the safe harbour from which I have departed to discover other routes and then return regularly.

Johann Sebastian Bach - Mass in B Minor (Breitkopf & Härtel Edition)
Dunedin Consort & Players / John Butt
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz: 1,87 GB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Linn Records # CKD 254 | Country/Year: UK 2006
Genre: Classical, Sacred | Style: Baroque, Vocal | Source: Linn

"…Many excellent recordings of this monumental work cater for different tastes and priorities. Some have more consistent line-ups of soloists, equally impressive choirs (of varying sizes) and comparably strong artistic direction. Although an excellent one voice-per-part version is nothing new, Butt's insightful direction and scholarship, integrated with the Dunedin's extremely accomplished instrumental playing and consort singing, amount to an enthralling and revelatory collective interpretation of the Mass in B minor - perhaps the most probing since Andrew Parrott's explosive 1985 version" ~Grammophone

Bach's setting of the Magnificat is one of his most often-recorded vocal works; as a rule, it's paired with one of Bach's lavishly scored festal cantatas. (The Easter Oratorio seems to be a current favorite.) Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan had a different idea: they've paired Bach's Magnificat with roughly contemporary settings by Johann Kuhnau, who was Bach's immediate predecessor in Leipzig, and Jan Dismas Zelenka, who was a composer at the court of Saxony in Dresden. Zelenka is an interesting composer, among the most underrated of the Baroque era. His writing is less dense and intricate than Bach's–at times it looks forward to the simpler, more elegant style of Haydn and C.P.E. Bach. Zelenka knew his counterpoint, however, and was fond of slipping the occasional surprising chord change into his music.

Nobody knows why Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six suites for solo cello. Nor does anybody know how it came about that the suites were soon afterwards consigned to oblivion and more than a century before a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy discovered a worn copy of the score in a second-hand bookstore store in Bar- celona. For the next 11 years Pablo Casals practiced them every day. Finally, in 1936, he entered London’s Abbey Road studios to record the second and third suites for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Bach’s cello suites have become a rite of passage for all aspiring cellists.

Nobody knows why Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six suites for solo cello. Nor does anybody know how it came about that the suites were soon afterwards consigned to oblivion and more than a century before a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy discovered a worn copy of the score in a second-hand bookstore store in Bar- celona. For the next 11 years Pablo Casals practiced them every day. Finally, in 1936, he entered London’s Abbey Road studios to record the second and third suites for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Bach’s cello suites have become a rite of passage for all aspiring cellists.