Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ) is composed of an orchestra and a chorus specializing in Baroque music, playing on period instruments. It was founded in 1990 by

Masaaki Suzuki is a Japanese organist, harpsichordist and conductor, and the founder and music director of the Bach Collegium Japan. With this ensemble he is recording the complete choral works of Johann Sebastian Bach for the Swedish label BIS Records, for whi ...

with the purpose of introducing Japanese audiences to European Baroque music; Suzuki is still the music director. The ensemble has recorded all of Bach’s cantatas, a project that extended from 1995 to 2018 and accounts for over half of its discography.

History

The ensemble was founded in 1990 by Masaaki Suzuki who is still its music director Since then, they have become sought-after performers, collaborating with European artists such as Max von Egmond, Nancy Argenta,

Christoph Prégardien Christoph Prégardien (born 18 January 1956) is a German lyric tenor whose career is closely associated with the roles in Mozart operas, as well as performances of Lieder, oratorio roles, and Baroque music. He is well known for his performances an ...

Peter Kooy Peter Kooij (or, internationally Kooy, born 1954, in Soest) is a Dutch bass singer who specializes in baroque music. Biography Kooij started his musical career at 6 years as a choir boy. However he started his musical studies as a violin studen ...

Hana Blažíková Hana Blažíková (born 2 December 1980) is a Czech soprano and harpist. She is focused on Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, appearing internationally. She has recorded as a member of the Bach Collegium Japan, among many others. Career ...

, Monika Frimmer, Michael Chance, Kai Wessel, Gerd Türk,

Michael Schopper Michael Schopper (born 28 May 1942) is a German bass-baritone in opera and concert, and an academic teacher. Michael Schopper was educated with the Regensburger Domspatzen and studied on a scholarship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes ...

and Concerto Palatino. They have toured Asia, Europe and North America, with many performances as cultural festivals such as Edinburgh Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the Festival Internacional Cervantino the Bach Festival in Leipzig, the Oregon Bach Festival and the

Boston Early Music Festival The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1980 in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. to promote historical music performance. It presents an annual concert series in Boston and New York City, produces opera recordi ...

. Five years after the Collegium was founded, they began a project to record all the

Bach cantata The cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, known as Bach cantatas ( German: ), are a body of work consisting of over 200 surviving independent works, and at least several dozen that are considered lost. As far as known, Bach's earliest ca ...

s, finishing in 2013. Working with Swedish record label BIS, the work was performed at a Christian chapel at

Kobe University , also known in the Kansai region as , is a leading Japanese national university located in the city of Kobe, in Hyōgo. It was established in 1949, but the academic origins of Kobe University trace back to the establishment of Kobe Higher Com ...

, one of the few Christian churches in the country large enough to properly perform such works. These recordings account for over half of the ensemble’s 99-album discography.

The ensemble

The Collegium is based in Tokyo and

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, w ...

, with the aim of introducing Japanese audiences to Baroque music on period instruments. It consists of a Baroque orchestra and chorus with about twenty voices and about 25 instrumentalists at any given performance. Unlike most Japanese orchestras, it has some female section-leaders, and it draws on a hand-picked group of European instrumentalists. The vocal soloists are also a mix of Japanese and foreign, Suzuki's argument being that if the Collegium employed only Europeans, there would be little to distinguish it from other period ensembles.

Masaaki Suzuki

Masaaki Suzuki (b. 1954) founded the collegium after being invited to inaugurate a hall in Osaka, bringing together two ensembles already under his direction. Suzuki is a pioneer of early-music performance in East Asia and an international Bach authority. He graduated Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and later attended the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, studying under Piet Kee and Ton Koopman.

Artistry

The focus of the ensemble, for which they are noted, is the works of Bach and those Protestant German composers that influenced him such as

Dietrich Buxtehude Dieterich Buxtehude (; ; born Diderik Hansen Buxtehude; c. 1637 – 9 May 1707) was a Danish organist and composer of the Baroque period, whose works are typical of the North German organ school. As a composer who worked in various voca ...

, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein and

Georg Böhm Georg Böhm (2 September 1661 – 18 May 1733) was a German Baroque organist and composer. He is notable for his development of the chorale partita and for his influence on the young J. S. Bach. Life Böhm was born in 1661 in Hohenkirchen. ...

. Best known for their performances of Bach’s Cantatas, they have also performed his Passions, as well as Handel’s ''

Messiah In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach ...

'' and Monteverdi's ''

Vespers Vespers is a service of evening prayer, one of the canonical hours in Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic (both Latin and Eastern), Lutheran, and Anglican liturgies. The word for this fixed prayer time comes from the Latin , meani ...

''. Most of these works are for a full chorus, but it also presents smaller programs for soloists and small vocal groups. Alex Ross identifies Suzuki’s approach to Bach’s music as falling between two extremes, that of large ensembles (now regarded as old-fashioned in this repertoire), and on the other hand that of purists with one voice per part. According to Ross, Suzuki's interpretations tend towards subtlety rather than flamboyance avoiding "abrupt accents, florid ornaments, and freewheeling tempos that are fashionable in Baroque performance practice". Ross praises Suzuki's clarity and musicality but suggests that at times the performances can seem to lack force. The BBC reviewed a 2013 release in the cantata series as "Fluently stylish and idiomatic, the performers live and breathe Bach's music with as much immediacy as if it had been composed yesterday".

Members

Concertmaster (violin, viola and viola d'amore): Ryo Terakado

Sopranos

* Minae Fujisaki * Yoshie Hida * Tamiko Hoshi * Mihoko Hoshikawa * Naoco Kaketa *

Yumiko Kurisu Yumiko Kurisu is a Japanese classical soprano, a musicologist and an academic teacher. She has recorded cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach with the Bach Collegium Japan, both as a soloist as a member of the ensemble. Biography Kurisu studied at th ...

* Joanne Lunn * Aki Matsui * Dorothee Mields * Sachiko Muratani *

Rachel Nicholls Rachel Nicholls is an English soprano in opera and concert. Career Born in Bedford, England, Nicholls studied French at the University of York, and from 1998 voice at the Royal College of Music with Kathleen Livingstone. In 2001, she won se ...

Yukari Nonoshita Yukari Nonoshita ( jp:野々下由香里, Nonoshita Yukari) is a japanese soprano. She studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. She continued her studies in France at the and the École Normale de Musique de Paris, with ...

* Carolyn Sampson * Eri Sawae * Mikiko Suzuki * Aki Yanagisawa

Altos

* Hiroya Aoki * Yuko Anazawa *

Pascal Bertin Pascal Bertin (born 1965) is a French countertenor. Pascal Bertin began his singing career at the age of 11 years old with the Chœur d'Enfants de Paris, under the direction of Roger de Magnee, with whom he performed as a soloist around the world ...

* Robin Blaze * Mutsumi Hatano * Yoshikazu Mera * Toshiharu Nakajima * Claudia Schmitz * Tamaki Suzuki * Akira Tachikawa * Chiharu Takahashi * Yukie Tamura * Sumihito Uesugi * Matthew White * Makiko Yamashita

Tenors

* Yusuke Fujii * Hiroto Ishikawa * Takayuki Kagami * Koki Katano * Jan Kobow * Wolfram Lattke * Satoshi Mizukoshi * Katsuhiko Nakashima * Takanori Onishi * Makoto Sakurada * Michio Shimada * Jun Suzuki * Yosuke Taniguchi * Akira Takizawa * Gerd Türk *

Andreas Weller Andreas Weller (born 1969) is a German tenor who focuses on historically informed performance. Career Born in Stuttgart, Weller was from the age of eight a singer in the boys' choir Stuttgarter Hymnus-Chorknaben. He studied voice and conducti ...

Basses

* Daisuke Fujii * Jun Hagiwara * Yoshiya Hida * Toru Kaku *

* Tetsuya Odagawa * Yoshitaka Ogasawara * Tetsuya Oi * Kazuhiko Ono * Naoki Sasaki * Chiyuki Urano * Yusuke Watanabe * Roderick Williams * Dominik Wörner * Seiji Yoshikawa.

References

{{Authority control Mixed early music groups Japanese orchestras Japanese choirs Musical groups established in 1990 Bach choirs Bach music ensembles 1990 establishments in Japan