Bach Collegium Japan

The Bach Collegium Japan stands among the leading Japanese ensembles specializing in period instruments. Its roster typically comprises a chamber orchestra of roughly twenty players together with a choir of about twenty-five voices, and the group concentrates its efforts on the cantatas and other choral compositions of J.S. Bach as well as selected works by Baroque figures such as Handel, Schütz, and Buxtehude. At times the ensemble reduces its forces to present purely instrumental pieces, among them the Brandenburg Concertos. Regular appearances take place in Japan, while the ensemble also maintains an active schedule at prominent venues abroad and has produced more than one hundred discs for the BIS label.

Masaaki Suzuki established the Bach Collegium Japan in 1990 and continues to serve as its music director. The ensemble’s customary performance sites have remained the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall and the Kobe Shoin Women’s University Chapel. Its initial overseas engagements began in 2000 with visits to Israel, Spain, and Australia. A well-received Italian tour followed in 2001, encompassing Rome, Milan, and Florence, after which the ensemble made its American debut in 2003 with six-city concerts that included New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston, and Los Angeles. Suzuki frequently takes the keyboard role in both live performances and recordings, most often at the harpsichord or organ, instruments on which he has attained virtuoso command. Beyond his leadership of the Bach Collegium Japan he has also sustained a distinguished independent career as recitalist, guest soloist, and recording artist.

Notable touring activity has included a return visit to the United States in 2006 as well as appearances that same year in London, Amsterdam, and Madrid. Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the ensemble and its concert presenters directed the proceeds from its American tour dates toward relief initiatives. In 1995 the Bach Collegium Japan launched an extensive recording project for BIS that encompassed all of Bach’s church cantatas, completing the fifty-album series in 2014. The final installment of the complete cantata cycle appeared in 2018. Parallel releases during these years presented additional Bach compositions such as the Violin Concertos and the Orchestral Suites, together with discs devoted to Handel’s Messiah, Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri, and numerous other works. Observers have repeatedly remarked on the rapid progress of the cantata project, a pace the ensemble has sustained; in 2020 alone it issued recordings of the St. Matthew Passion, the St. John Passion, and the opening volume of the Harpsichord Concertos.