Bach - Coffee & Wedding Cantatas
Sampson; Sakurada; Schreckenberger
Bach Collegium Japan / Suzuki
BIS BISCD1411

Release date November 2004

Midway through his outstanding survey of Bach's sacred cantatas, Masaaki Suzuki has now embarked on a complementary series of the secular cantatas, of which around twenty survive. The first volume includes the best-known of them, the Coffee Cantata, composed for performance at Zimermann's Coffee House, where Bach held weekly concerts. It's a one-act comic opera in all but name - it would be perfectly suitable for staging. Perhaps because of its uncommon status within Bach's output - 'comic' and 'Bach' are not words that regularly appear in the same sentence - it tends to be performed in a rather hammy way. Suzuki and his excellent singers find a lightness of touch that feels just right for this charming piece. Carolyn Sampson, a welcome addition to Suzuki's little repertory company of singers, spins Heute noch exquisitely, while Stephan Schrekenberger is attractively youthful-sounding as Liesgens's coffee-hating father. Suzuki avoids the usual coupling - the Peasant Cantata - in favour of O holder Tag, the so-called Wedding Cantata, in a graceful, pleasingly straightforward performance from Sampson. Suzuki's one-to-a-part accompaniments are a treat, with some particularly fine playing from the flautist Liliko Maeda.

Reviewed by Sandy Matheson