Japanese orchestra brings beauty of baroque to the city
Group’s founder presents early music from library of its namesake composer
It has been a particularly fruitful fall for Vancouver Early Music, but before its annual holiday extravaganza in late December, there’s another extraordinary program planned in the first visit of the celebrated Bach Collegium Japan, in a program of Vivaldi, Handel, and, of course, J.S. Bach.
Most of us know that there is profound interest in what used to be called “western” classical music in Japan, and Vancouver audiences are well aware of the remarkable achievements of countless Japanese musicians. But the Collegium is the first period instrument ensemble from Japan to attract world attention.
Its long-standing goal is both modest and encompassing, as its mission statement acknowledges: “The music of J.S. Bach is part of the joint patrimony of mankind. Ever since the formation of Bach Collegium Japan, we have continued to convey Bach’s music from Japan out to the wider world. Our desire is to enable as many people as possible to share with us the joy of this wonderful music.”
The origin of Japan’s leading early music organization goes back to 1990, when Masaaki Suzuki felt the time was ripe to establish his ensemble.
Kobe-born Suzuki studied composition and organ in Tokyo, then travelled to the Netherlands for advanced study in organ and harpsichord at Amsterdam’s renowned Sweelinck Conservatorium. Beyond working with his ensemble Suzuki taught at Yale, and is now principal guest conductor of the Yale Schola Cantorum.
Today the Bach Collegium Japan performs regularly in Tokyo, Kobe, and Nagoya, and frequently tours the world. That the Collegium knows its Bach is unquestionable: it has recorded all his church cantatas in a massive recording project for BIS Records, and has won such prestigious European accolades as the 2014 ECHO Klassick Award, the German Record Critics’ Award, France’s Diapason d’Or, and a BBC Music Magazine Award.
Vancouver is the ensemble’s final stop in its latest North American tour, which began Nov. 30 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. In her extensive notes for the Collegium’s Vancouver performance, Christina Hutten notes that this fall’s touring repertoire is drawn, with a single exception, from the musical library of J.S. Bach himself.
The program will include showcases for various instrumentalists, including Masamitsu San’nomiya in Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, and Liliko Madea, flute, Ryo Terakado, violin, Emmanuel Balssa, cello, and Masaaki Suzuki at the harpsichord in Telemann’s Quartet in D major. And to launch the program there will be one of Bach’s own orchestral works, the Suite in B minor with its celebrated Badinerie finale.
Also included in the program are two works featuring solo voice, in
this case British soprano Joanne Lunn. She trained at London’s Royal College of Music and has performed with such early music luminaries as John Eliot Gardiner and Roger Norrington. Here she will sing Handel’s Silete venti (1724), “the only piece on this program that cannot be directly connected to Bach’s library,” according to Hutten.
There’s also a rarely heard composition, Languet anima, by a far less familiar baroque master, Francesco Bartolomeo Conti, an Italian performer/composer working for the Habsburg court in Vienna.
Hutten slyly notes that Conti’s offertory appears to have been a Bach favourite, perhaps as a performance vehicle for another favourite, soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, who became the second Mrs. Bach in 1721.