Bach Collegium Japan is composed of an orchestra and a chorus specializing in Baroque music, playing on period instruments. It was founded in 1990 by Masaaki Suzuki with the purpose of introducing Japanese audiences to European Baroque music. Suzuki still remains its 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.
The Collegium is based in Tokyo and Kobe, 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 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, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein and Georg Böhm. Best known for their performances of Bach’s Cantatas, they have also performed his Passions, as well as Handel’s Messiah and Monteverdi's Vespers. 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, 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".
