Secular Cantatas Vol 1: BWV210 'The Wedding', BWV211 'The Coffee'

"From a purely musical point of view this is a very good recording. Carolyn Sampson has a beautiful, warm and yet clear voice, which is well suited to this kind of music. Her German pronunciation is quite good too. The other singers - in the Coffee Cantata - perform at the same level, and so does the instrumental ensemble, playing here with one instrument per part. The solo parts for transverse flute, oboe d'amore and violin are well played."
(MusicWeb Aug 2005)

Interspersed with their offerings of the complete sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach, Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan have been recording other of Bach's sacred choral works as well as purely instrumental works (such as the Brandenburg Concertos, BIS-CD-1151/52).

Following the recent 25th volume of the ongoing cantata project on BIS, the time has come to release the BCJ:s first disc of secular cantatas by the master. Just over twenty such works have survived, and we know of almost thirty other cantatas that have been lost. The number of lost works is probably much higher, however, the reason being that, almost without exception, they are commissioned or occasional pieces written for an outstanding, festive event in family, social, academic or political life.

The present disc includes the Coffee Cantata, probably the most popular of these secular cantatas. (Bach himself called the work a dramma per musica.) It was written around 1734, probably for a performance at the Zimmermann Coffee House in Leipzig, which also served as a concert venue. But the disc opens with O holder Tag, a wedding cantata for solo soprano dated, in the version here performed, to 1741. (The piece was actually used in more or less modified form by Bach on at least five different occasions, from as early on as 1729.) The present recording represents the debut on BIS of British soprano Carolyn Sampson, well-known by all who follow the world of baroque music as one of today's most exciting performers in her field. In the Coffee Cantata, she is joined by Makoto Sakurada and Stephan Schreckenberger, both of whom are seasoned collaborators in Masaaki Suzuki's cycle of sacred cantatas.