“Charles Ives' America”
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Film two in the six-film Naxos series:
“Dvorak’s Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music”

Steeped in nostalgia, in his Danbury childhood and the New England Transcendentalists with whom he profoundly identified, in the American experience of race which he absorbed from his Abolitionist grandparents, Ives used the past with consummate empathy and brave artistry. A musical Whitman or Melville, he embodies the American trope of the “self-made genius,” heeding Emerson’s call to cut the cultural umbilical cord with Europe, forging an original path. The music at hand here includes his Second Symphony (a milestone in culling the vernacular to set beside Huckleberry Finn), The Housatonic at Stockbridge (possibly the most sublime nature reverie in the American orchestral repertoire), and The St. Gaudens in Boston Common (a singular ghost dirge in tribute to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw’s Black Civil War regiment). We also hear portions of Ives’s Concord Sonata performed by Steven Mayer (an interpretation seasoned by a lifetime of advocacy) and half a dozen Ives songs peerlessly sung (in live performance with Paul Sanchez) by William Sharp. The commentators include the Ives scholar Peter Burkholder, James Sinclair, William Sharp and Judith Tick.

‘Charles Ives’ America may be the most important film ever produced about American music. Horowitz moves Ives from the fringes squarely to his position as the seminal composer of our country’ – JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the 1960s and in the decades following, the Budapest String Quartet’s mantle at Columbia was passed on to the Juilliard String Quartet. Over the years, with some changes in personnel, the ensemble repeatedly set down its famously lean, energetic and expressive interpretations of the Beethoven quartets in New York recording studios. These have remained catalogue staples. Less well known is the Beethoven cycle they recorded live in Washington at the Library of Congress in 1982. Gramophone singled out this complete traversal for its special depth and flexibility. Presented here on 9 albums, this is its first Sony release.

REVIEW:

The slow introduction to the C Major Quartet No. 9 is handled wonderfully, which sets up well for the rest of the movement and the work as a whole. These are followed by nice recordings of the “Harp” and “Serioso” quartets, thus bringing the middle period to an end.

The late quartets open with a really nice recording of the Nos. 12 and 13, with the first of these being particularly fine. The final disc of the nine houses the 15th and 16th quartets, which again receive fairly good recordings. Overall, the tempos selected here tend to be slower than in their earlier recording, which is usual for live recordings.

Overall sound quality is, at times, a bit of an issue here, even taking into account the live nature of these recordings, and overall isn't up to the sound quality of the quartet's highly regarded 1960s studio cycle of these works for RCA.

– MusicWeb International

“Beyond Psycho - The Musical Genius of Bernard Herrmann”
A PostClassical Ensemble “More than Music” film
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Film five in the six-film Naxos series:
“Dvorak’s Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music”

Hollywood’s supreme film composer was a casualty of the standard narrative - as he himself was bitterly aware. Not only were his movie scores high creative accomplishments; Bernard Herrmann was a formidable- and formidably unfashionable- concert composer whose Clarinet Quintet may be the most beautiful chamber music by an American. His Psycho Narrative, which we also sample, surpasses the Psycho Suite we normally hear. He honed his gift for dramatizing the spoken word as the pre-eminent composer for a genre no longer remembered: the radio drama. This film samples Whitman (1944) – a Norman Corwin radio play that deserves to live as a concert work. It also exemplifies how radio, an unprecedented mass medium, once consolidated the American experience, its biggest star being Franklin D. Roosevelt. Participants include the Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener, the critic Alex Ross, Murray Horwitz on radio lore, and William Sharp on playing Walt Whitman to music by Bernard Herrmann.

“Lou Harrison and Cultural Fusion”
A PostClassical Ensemble “More than Music” film
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Film six in the six-film Naxos series:
“Dvorak’s Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music”

Joe Horowitz writes of this film: "No non-Western musical idiom has so impacted on the Western concert tradition as Indonesian gamelan, beginning with the Javanese Pavilion at the 1889 Paris Exposition: an epiphany. Sampling gamelan-inspired works by Debussy, Poulenc, Messiaen, and McPhee, we arrive at a paragon exemplar of cultural fusion – Lou Harrison – and a pair of concertos, for violin and piano, unsurpassed by those of any other American. The composer/scholar Bill Alves demonstrates the layered complexity of Javanese gamelan, and how it translates into keyboard textures composed by Harrison for Keith Jarrett. For Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion, we tour the “junk percussion” – including flowerpots and washtubs – that Harrison made sing and dance."

He goes on to write "We now inhabit a “postclassical” musical aesthetic that, rather than piling on modernist complexity, draws inspiration from a variety of sources, Eastern and Western, “high” and popular. The prophetic figure, it seems to me is Lou Harrison, who practiced world music before there was a name for it. Harrison was certainly a composer who discovered a usable past – including music from Indonesia, China, and Japan. In the New World, a usable starting point was and remains the sorrow songs of African Americans, so eloquently celebrated around the turn of the twentieth century by W. E. B. Du Bois and Antonin Dvořák. Dvořák’s 1893 prophecy that “negro melodies” would foster a “great and noble” school of American music has never seemed more pertinent.”

"These six beautiful films reveal a compelling, inclusive musical tradition, deeply interwoven with American culture." – J. Peter Burkholder, author of 'A History of Western Music' and 'Listening to Charles Ives'.

“Aaron Copland: American Populist”
A PostClassical Ensemble “More than Music” film
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Film four in the six-film Naxos series:
“Dvorak’s Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music”

Buffeted by social and political currents, Copland can seem unmoored: a cork in a stream. He was politicized by the Depression- and by the example of Mexico, whose artists galvanized national identity and progressive thought. He wrote a prize-winning workers’ song and addressed a Communist picnic in Minnesota. Twenty years later, the Red Scare targeted him as a traitor. Can his odyssey be read as a parable illuminating the fate of the American artist?  This film features a reenactment of Copland’s grilling by Senator Joseph McCarthy (played by Edward Gero). It also highlights the most consequential Copland score we don’t know: his ingenious music of Lewis Mumford’s 1939 World’s Fair film The City, itself a complex product of the Popular Front. We reconsider the valedictory Piano Fantasy, in which Copland refreshed his modernist roots- a galvanizing performance by Benjamin Pasternack, who also recalls a telling encounter with the composer. The other commentators include the American historians Michael Kazin and Joseph McCartin, who ponder the tangled legacy of American populism of the left and right.

"The 'Dvořák’s Prophecy' film series makes an essential contribution to our understanding of the history of music in America, and of the role that music has played, and must continue to play, in American culture as a whole. The films are both enlightening and entertaining. I can readily envision their use in classrooms, in both introductory and advanced-research contexts. Non-specialists will also enjoy them thoroughly. Because Horowitz does not shy away from political, racial, and gender issues of intense contemporary relevance, these films are especially important right now." – Larry Starr, Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Washington

“The Souls of Black Folk and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music”
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Film three in the six-film Naxos series:
“Dvorak’s Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music”

If George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess – the highest creative achievement in American classical music – embodies a glorious (and controversial) fulfillment of Dvořák’s prophecy, there also exists a buried lineage of exceptional compositions by Black composers following in Dvořák’s wake. Coming first was his assistant Harry Burleigh, whose seminal settings of “Deep River” are – as our film illustrates – as much compositions as transcriptions. Burleigh’s initiative was sealed by singers like Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson. But William Levi Dawson’s oracular Negro Folk Symphony, though triumphantly premiered by Leopold Stokowski and his Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934, gathered dust – and Dawson was never to create the symphonic catalogue he seemed destined to undertake. Commentators include George Shirley, the most legendary name in present-day Black classical music, also Kevin Deas, music historians Gwynne Kuhner Brown and Michael Cooper, and conductor Michael Morgan. This film includes performances by pianist Benjamin Pasternack, The Fort Smith Symphony conducted by John Jeter, The Vienna Radio Symphony conducted by Arthur Fagen and Kevin Deas recorded in live performance.

“The disconnection between the rich history of Black American music and the classical music we typically hear has proved impoverishing. Because of our current conversation about race we now observe a seemingly desperate effort to make up for lost time, to present Black faces in the concert hall. I think that's only fair. But if it's going to become a permanent new way of thinking, there has to be new understanding. Dvořák's Prophecy is on time, it's a bull's-eye. We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. Joe Horowitz's book explains how we got there. . . . Dvořák's Prophecy proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.” –from George Shirley's Foreword to Dvořák's Prophecy

Review:

At last! While we have plenty of filmed productions of Coppélia to watch and enjoy – whether vintage, bang up to date or downright wacky – and a very good one of Sylvia, this new release finally brings the first of Delibes’s three ballets, La source, to a wide audience via Blu-ray and DVD.

The usual explanation for La source’s historical neglect has been that the contribution of Delibes’s co-composer Ludwig Minkus diminished the overall quality of the score. But that suggestion isn’t an adequate one – or even necessarily accurate. In the first place, we need to be clear that “co-composers” doesn’t mean that each of the score’s individual numbers was a sort of high-quality-Delibes-watered-down-by-workmanlike-Minkus hybrid. In fact, the way in which the collaborative process worked was a very practical one – even if we have no idea why it was adopted – with each man allocated responsibility for different parts of the score. Minkus was entrusted with Act 1 and the second scene of Act 3, while Delibes was responsible for Act 2 and Act 3’s first scene. That turned out, in practice, to be a pretty even split, for Minkus ended up providing about 45 minutes worth of music and Delibes penned about 44[.]

It is certainly true that there are differences between the two men’s scores. To some extent, those derive from the mundanely practical point that each composer was writing music for very different sections of the story. Minkus’s focus in Act 1 was on establishing the ballet’s various characters and generally setting the scene, while the finale to Act 3 offered few opportunities as it gave him only six minutes to wrap up the whole drama. Delibes, on the other hand, was tasked with creating the music underpinning the more glamorous jollifications at the khan’s court, which allowed him to concentrate on writing livelier material that was characterised by far more colour, glitter and exotic sensuality.

There is, however, a second and somewhat more fundamental explanation for the perceived contrasts between the two composers’ scores, for Minkus and Delibes had rather different conceptions of what writing music for the ballet actually meant. The former was a composer of the old school who, as Ivor Guest wrote in his booklet essay for the aforementioned Bonynge CD, “specialised in composing music for the ballet, a field not highly regarded in musical circles but which nonetheless demanded a special gift to satisfy the ballet-master’s requirements – to produce melodious numbers for the dances and suitably descriptive passages for the action, and above all to deliver to a deadline”. That has led some critics to perceive Minkus as little more than a hack journeyman who churned out unmemorable material on demand, even though audiences who have come to appreciate the manner in which his skilfully-wrought scores underpin such popular ballets as Don Quixote and La bayadère might beg to differ. In reality, his music was in no way “inferior” to that of the next generation of ballet composers: it simply aimed to achieve a very different - but certainly no less legitimate – musical and dramatic purpose. The first embodiment of that subsequent generation, Delibes himself, was, on the other hand, a composer whose conception of ballet was developing into something rather more ambitious. No less a figure than Tchaikovsky, the originator of the modern “symphonic” style of ballet score, regarded Sylvia as “the first ballet in which the music constitutes not just the main, but the sole interest. What charm, what grace, what melodic, rhythmic and harmonic richness. I was ashamed. If I had known this music earlier, then of course I would not have written Swan Lake”.

It is far too easy, in fact, to assert glibly that any contrasts between the two composers’ contributions are necessarily qualitative in nature. Indeed, when listened to blind and without foreknowledge of who actually composed what, the score of La source – skilfully edited and occasionally augmented here by Marc-Olivier Dupin - actually emerges as a pretty seamless whole.

In reality, there were two other much more significant causes of the ballet’s failure to maintain a long-term place in the repertoire. In the first case, its plot was undeniably involved, and it is notable that the production under consideration omits several of its complicating plotlines. Moreover, the fact that there are no less than three central female figures and that easily confused names were selected for some of the central characters (Naïla/Nouredda, Djémil/Dadjé) does not help. The inconsistency of some of the participants’ on-stage motivations can also be puzzling from time to time – though, in the absence of any other modern production with which to compare it, that may be a feature unique to this particular one.

The second legitimate reason for La source’s relatively rapid descent into obscurity is simply accidental. It successfully maintained its place in the repertoire for a decade and there is no reason to doubt that regular revivals might subsequently have been mounted. However, a disastrous fire in 1873 destroyed the drawings, models and plans on which the original production had been based and, rather than recreate them from scratch, it no doubt seemed easier to ballet impresarios at the time to move on to different projects.

This new Blu-ray/DVD release preserves a new production of the ballet dating from almost 150 years after its premiere. Conservatively choreographed by Jean-Guillaume Bart for the Paris Opera Ballet, it follows the original story’s broad outlines and uses much of the Minkus/Delibes score. Booklet notes author Laure Guilbert is nevertheless at pains to stress that this production is in no way a “reconstruction” of the original but instead has a character and identity of its own. Those last words might be enough to strike fear in the heart of traditionalist ballet fans, but in reality the French choreographer (gushingly described by Ms. Guilbert as a man who “fervently cultivates his attachment to the classical universe… a lover of dance who has transformed [it] into an odyssey throughout the near- and far-flung realms of the art”) is owed a real debt of gratitude for his achievement in returning La source to the stage. There are, it’s true, a few significant problem areas that would have benefited from attention. In the case of the plot, Nouredda’s motivation and reactions as she experiences her character’s trials and tribulations can be somewhat opaque or even downright puzzling. In addition, the stage production itself is visually rather disconcerting. There is, to my own eyes at least, a jarring mismatch between Christian Lacroix’s detailed and often gorgeously elaborate costumes and Éric Ruf’s essentially impressionistic set designs. The latter are highly imaginative and attractive in their own right (especially a set of prominent and exquisitely lit ropes, lowered over the stage from the flies, that represent trees) but they are clearly not intended as any sort of realistic depiction of the settings and that doesn’t gel with the detailed, elaborate and convincingly “realistic” clothing sported by the dancers. Neither element can be described as wrong in itself, but another producer might have chosen to integrate them more effectively.

The quality of the dancing, meanwhile, is generally high, with the women, in particular, demonstrating confident assurance in their own technical skills. Ludmila Pagliero as Naïla performs with delicacy and an appropriate sense of otherworldliness; she presumably impressed not only the theatre audience but the company’s management, too, as within a year of this performance she had been promoted to the top rank of danseuse étoile. Meanwhile, the nature of her role as the princess Nouredda means that the other leading female dancer, Isabelle Ciaravola, tends to spend a disproportionate amount of time on stage looking depressed and generally mopey – although there are also moments, as already noted, when she looks bizarrely happy even though her circumstances are at their worst. If her acting is somewhat questionable, the same cannot be said, however, of Ms. Ciaravola’s dancing which is, invariably, both sensitively and often rather beautifully delivered. Of the men, Karl Paquette combines sheer energy with attention to detail in a winning performance that suffers only from an uncharacteristically drab and featureless costume, little suited, in my opinion, to the hero of a classical ballet. The role of Nouredda’s brother Mozdock, concerned about her only as far as she serves his own political ambitions, is taken by Christophe Duquenne who delivers an effectively villainous turn while leading his energetic and well-drilled soldiers in several lively numbers. Dancing as the elf Zaël, Mathias Heymann is the audience’s favourite as he leaps his way enthusiastically and repeatedly across the stage, creating a genuine character out of his role. The dancer portraying the libidinous khan, Alexis Renaud, makes the most of his opportunities but does not create as much of an impression as the other men. The rest of the company make a very positive contribution, to the extent that I thought that the numbers in which the primary focus was on the corps de ballet were among the most effectively delivered in the whole performance.

On the technical side, I was particularly impressed by the effectively realised stage lighting which has been very well captured on film. The sound, as relayed on this recording, is also more than merely acceptable and allows us to appreciate plenty of felicitous detail from the orchestra, led on this occasion by Koen Kessels who will be known to many as music director of the Royal Ballet. Meanwhile, the experienced François Roussillon’s film direction focuses our attention to everything that we need to see while not distracting us unnecessarily or drawing undue attention to itself.

This is an important release for balletomanes. It is, I think, unlikely that there will be an alternative version of La source any time soon...I repeat, therefore, my original reaction to the release of this new and well-produced Blu-ray disc – at last!
 
Rob Maynard

“Dvořák's New World Symphony - A Lens on the American Experience of Race”
A PostClassical Ensemble “More than Music” film
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Film one in the six-film Naxos series:
“Dvorak’s Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music”

The six documentary films in this series align with Joe Horowitz's new book 'Dvořák’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music'. Like the book, they explore a “new paradigm” for the history of classical music in the United States. Why classical music in America “stayed white” is a central concern of Dvořák’s Prophecy." The films incorporate Naxos recordings as well as live performances, including William Sharp singing Ives, Kevin Deas singing Harry Burleigh, and Dennis Russell Davies conducting Harrison’s Piano Concerto. Participating commentators include critic Alex Ross, Black Classical Music pioneer George Shirley, music historians Bill Alves, Beth Levy, and Judith Tick, and the African-American conductors Roderick Cox and the late Michael Morgan.

 This first film in the series keys on Dvořák’s prophecy and explores its present-day pertinence. In New York City and Spillville, Iowa, Dvořák boldly chose to regard African-Americans and Native Americans as representative Americans. That decision was both acclaimed and ridiculed at the time. It remains inspirational. His New World Symphony, still the best known and best loved symphonic work conceived on American soil, is saturated with the influence of plantation song, and also with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha. This act of appropriation, the film argues, was an act of empathy performed by a great humanitarian. The musical selections here are mainly taken from the Hiawatha Melodrama, which Joe Horowitz co-composed with the music historian Michael Beckerman with orchestrations by Angel Gil-Ordonez. It mates Dvorak with Longfellow. The participating commentators include the music historians Mark Clague and Lorenzo Candelaria, the literary historian Brian Yothers, the conductor JoAnn Falletta, faculty members from Howard University – and also (sagely commenting on cultural appropriation) the bass-baritone Kevin Deas, and the late Michael Morgan.

"Horowitz's six beautiful films reveal a compelling inclusive tradition in American classical music, open to influences from popular, Black, Native American, and world music, this music is deeply interwoven with American culture." – J. Peter Burkholder, author of A History of Western Music and Listening to Charles Ives.

The All-Star Orchestra gives you a front row seat to the world’s greatest music, performed by top players chosen from over 30 great American orchestras, and conducted by Gerard Schwarz. The programs feature complete performances of popular masterpieces and world premieres of new works by leading American composers. Filmed in High-Definition with multiple cameras in and around the orchestra, the All-Star Orchestra celebrates the symphonic experience in the 21st century. The first work on this release is Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The score is dedicated to “my friends pictured within,” and each Variation represents a real person. As he was finishing the work, Elgar wrote: “The enigma I will not explain- it’s ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture.” A musical mystery of great beauty and endless fascination. The next piece is Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The perennial family favorite showcases- one by one- all the instruments of the orchestra. Next is Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 2, opus 132 “Mysterious Mountain.” The composer wrote: “Mountains are symbols, like pyramids, of man’s attempt to know God. Mountains are symbolic meeting places between the mundane and spiritual world.” Finally is Eugene Goossens’ Jubilee Variations. This is a world premiere video recording of this unpublished 1944 work created by Eugene Goossens with contributions from ten composer friends, including Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson, William Schumann, and more.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys, a tragédie en musique, became known as the ‘king’s opera’ due to Louis XIV’s fondness for it. The work stands as a testament to the Sun King’s courtly refinement, as well as his moves to make France the center of European artistic culture. The opera’s themes of romantic dilemmas and ultimate tragedy, set amidst the poetic atmosphere of Ovid’s classical mythology, create the perfect vehicle for a narrative filled with dramatic intensity combined with a myriad of moving and expressive arias and duets. William Christie conducts this acclaimed production – hailed by The New York Times as being ‘as satisfying it is bold’.

REVIEW:

The role of Atys is physically as well as vocally taxing, but is here superbly realised by the German tenor, Bernard Richter, while the French soprano, Emmanuelle De Negri, is an excellent Sangaride, with the creamy voice of the mezzo, Stephanie D’Oustrac, as Cybele completing the love triangle. The cast list is large, and with the Compagnie Fetes Galantes providing the dancers, the stage is at times totally filled. The reviews at the time of filimg (2011) were suitably euphoric regarding the casting, and equally of the presence of the period instrument orchestra, Les Arts Florrissants, with the idiomatic conducting of William Christie. The filming itself is immaculate in its ideal mix of full stage and close-up images, while the sound quality is gorgeous.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

The New Year´s Eve Concert 1988 was one of the last concerts that Herbert von Karajan gave with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin. For this concert he invited the 17 year old Evgeny Kissin to his debut with the orchestra. After the concert the press did raving reviews about Kissin´s musicality and technical skills and he proves till today that he is one of the best pianists of our time. The New Year´s Concert from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein Vienna with the Wiener Philharmoniker is always one of the best-selling classical albums each year. In 1987 Herbert von Karajan conducted his only performance of the New Year´s Concert performing famous pieces from Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss. As soloist in one piece you can hear the legendary soprano Kathleen Battle.

Based, in part, on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is Verdi’s last work for the stage – and only his second comic opera. And yet the humor in this multilayered masterpiece is distinctly wry, for all the main characters exhibit an array of human weaknesses that are implacably exposed by Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito. In this legendary performance from the Salzburg Festival, Herbert von Karajan is not only leading a stunning cast of singers featuring the Wiener Philharmoniker, he too directed the opera, in the amazing set design of Günther Schneider-Siemssen.

A 2020 Grammy nominee for best opera recording!

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD
Based on Oscar Wilde’s story The Birthday of the Infanta, Zemlinsky’s single-act opera Der Zwerg is the tragic tale of a dwarf who is presented at court, falls in love with the beautiful Donna Clara, but is ultimately forced to see himself as others see him and to die of a broken heart. Preceded by Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, Op. 34 (1930), Zemlinsky’s Romantic score is full of psychological intrigue. Is Der Zwerg a critique of society’s superficiality? Is it the composer’s self-portrait in his doomed affair with Alma Schindler? Director Tobias Kratzer’s stunning, transparent production creates a space in which each character is thrown into sharp relief in this ‘fine, noble and melancholy work’. (Bachtrack.com)

In June 1995, a virtually unknown group of Japanese musicians embarked on the monumental task of recording the complete sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Almost eighteen years later, on 23rd February 2013, the Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki – by then household names in the international music world – reached their goal when they finished recording the 55th release of a series which, in the meantime, had been met with overwhelming acclaim worldwide. Made in conjunction with the final cantata recording, this film commemorates the occasion. Besides performances of the three last cantatas – Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV191, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV69 and Freue dich, erlöste Schar, BWV30 – the film includes interviews with Masaaki Suzuki and key members of Bach Collegium Japan as well as behind the-scenes footage.

REVIEWS:

This disc is essentially Volume 55 of the Bach Sacred Cantata series with an extra chorus and added video. At least two reviews are elsewhere on the Music Web International site. The addition of 25 minutes or so of interviews with the soloists, chorus members, players, engineers and Suzuki himself make this celebratory issue fascinating to watch and hear. A secondary bonus is the presence of subtitles during the four performances, making it far easier to stay with Bach’s religious message. The air of dedication hanging over all the activity is actually quite inspiring, and rightly so, for this series is a landmark in recording history, up there with the Solti Ring. Not only has a complete set of the sacred cantatas been committed to disc but they are in period style, in SACD surround and they are superbly well documented. Reviewing this has cost me money because I realised that I could no longer resist buying the recently released, complete remastered set on BIS SACD9055, not only for the missing few dozen cantatas I gained, but also for the old CD-only issues being newly minted as SACD surround. And, I might add, for the useful indexes to help navigation around the 55 discs!

The performances of the three cantatas on this Blu-ray are of course superb; from the most prominent soloists to the back desk of the violins, all are now seasoned performers, and it shows. Each cantata appears to be a single performance with only the audio and video team and the microphones as audience. The singers move smoothly out of their place in the chorus to the front to sing their solos and then walk back into place. It is all impressively smooth and unfussy. The addition of the great Dona Nobis Pacem chorus from the B minor Mass acts as a wholly appropriate closing tribute. The surround sound, unusually not in DTS Master Audio but LPCM Surround 5.0, is excellent as always. Even those who have purchased the final volume of the series should obtain this too. You might even be tempted to raise a glass to the series as you watch the performers and engineers do just that on your screen.

-- MusicWeb International