Search - Bach, Blaze, Turk :: Cantatas Vol. 34 (BWV 1, 126, 127) [Hybrid SACD] / Bach Collegium Japan * Suzuki

Here's the Good News...

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 01/17/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you already own a complete Bach cantata set, or even a raft of separate cantata CDs by various ensembles, you definitely won't need to replace all those disks with the complete Bach Collegium Japan. I offer this rash assertion, I confess, on the basis of hearing two CDs only, numbers 34 and 31 of the series. There's nothing unpleasant about either performance, but they are not as exciting as the Gardiner Bach Pilgrimage performances, nor as polished as the disks by Ton Koopman, nor as insightful as the original complete cantatas by Leonhardt and Harnoncourt, nor as lively as the performances by the Netherlands Bach Collegium, under Pieter Jan Leusink, in the Brilliant Classics complete Bach Edition.



What's good about the BCJ effort? The orchestra is outstanding, especially the double reeds. Tenor Gerd Turk is surely one of the best Bach voices of our times, bass Peter Kooij is excellent, and male alto Robin Blaze has a cultivated technique if not much emotional depth. The recording quality on these SACD disks is better than the norm of the previous complete cantata editions.



What's not so good? On this disk, #34, the soprano Carolyn Sampson doesn't satisfy my expectations in terms of pitch, and I don't find her phrasing very expressive. Conductor Masaaki Suzuki handles the martial and triumphant arias with effective marcato, but fails to yield his baton to the passages calling for serenity - what Schweitzer called Bach's "rhythm of blessedness." Thus the mood tends to remain much the same throughout. The weakest weakness, as is often so, is the chorus. It's devilishly hard to reproduce the sound of a chorus on digital CDs, and even the SACD technology doesn't prevent the typical "car radio" distortion. However, the chorus seems to have been coached to attack every 'big' note with a ragged emphasis that annoys me considerably. German vowels, forgive me for saying so, are not easily mastered; in this case, the rendering of most vowels as AA, II, UU, EE, or OO distorted both the text and the tuning.



Even so, in the balance these are worthy performances, though somehow not quite as fine, to my ears, as some of the others. A really earnest fan of Bach's cantatas would do well to select a few of her/his favorites and hear the BCJ performances thereof. Perhaps you'll hear virtues that I missed."