Japanese historical-performance specialist Masaaki Suzuki reaches the 40th volume of his complete traversal of Bach's cantatas with this disc. The series has attained an impressive level of technical consistency, and technical ensemble precision is what Suzuki's style is all about. Start with the German pronunciation of his Bach Collegium Japan, which has been tested on native Germans and found flawless. Among the various Bach cantata series, you can think of Suzuki and John Eliot Gardiner as being at opposite ends of the ...
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Japanese historical-performance specialist Masaaki Suzuki reaches the 40th volume of his complete traversal of Bach's cantatas with this disc. The series has attained an impressive level of technical consistency, and technical ensemble precision is what Suzuki's style is all about. Start with the German pronunciation of his Bach Collegium Japan, which has been tested on native Germans and found flawless. Among the various Bach cantata series, you can think of Suzuki and John Eliot Gardiner as being at opposite ends of the spectrum, with Gardiner's humanistic readings closely connected to the text, and varying widely in style according to the text, while with Suzuki the focus is on the instruments, and even the able soloists somehow seem subsidiary to the overall effect. The distinctive moments in Suzuki come in moments of unusual texture, for example in the duet "Lobe den Herren, der künstlich und fein" from the Cantata No 137 (track 3), where Bach wrote a mysterious squiggly line above the staff,...
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