Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantatas Vol. 55

Eighteen years ago, in 1995, Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ) began a project which would put them firmly on the world map as one of the leading exponents of Bach’s music in modern times. With the release of Volume 55 their series of the composer’s complete church cantatas – recorded in chronological order – reaches its conclusion. Masaaki was in London last week, and I took the opportunity to meet with him to congratulate him on that monumental achievement, and also to quiz him a little on some of the challenges and decisions he had faced in the process. The first challenge I asked him about was the fact that before he came along, Japan was not at all renowned as a place for Baroque music. He formed the BCJ in 1990 and they began their Bach Cantata series of concerts in 1992, and while he himself initially wondered who would come to their performances he was pleased (and perhaps slightly surprised) to discover that there was already very much an existing audience of enthusiastic Bach lovers in Japan. Over the years that audience has grown further, and even for a performance of three pretty unknown cantatas they now always get an audience of over a thousand people at their concerts in Tokyo.