Studio Masters

Masaaki Suzuki – J.S. Bach: Musikalisches Opfer (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:12 minutes | 1,44 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Johann Sebastian Bach’s appearance on 7th May 1747 at the court of Frederick the Great is the best documented event in the composer’s otherwise unglamorous career. During the proceedings, Frederick provided Bach with an exceptionally difficult theme on which to improvise a fugue. The King is said to have been impressed with the improvisation, but Bach himself was less so, and announced that he intended to set the theme to paper ‘in a regular fugue’. Several months later the Musical Offering appeared in print – a collection of 13 pieces in diverse genres: fugues, canons and a trio sonata, all exploiting the ‘Royal Theme’ in various intricate ways.

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Masaaki Suzuki – J.S. Bach: Toccatas, BWV 910-916 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:04 minutes | 1,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Very little is known about the origin of J. S. Bach’s seven Toccatas (BWV 910–916) or of their use. They are believed to have been written before 1717 or the end of Bach’s Weimar period – but it is quite possible that at least some of them were drafted before he arrived there in 1707, at the age of 22. The Toccatas are usually performed on harpsichord or piano – but even though they are ‘manualiter’ (intended to be played by the hands only) and do not call for pedal parts, they are also occasionally heard on the organ. In terms of style they are examples of the so-called stylus phantasticus – ‘the most free and unfettered method of composition’ – and belong to the North German organ tradition of the late 17th century.

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Masaaki Suzuki – Bach: Organ Works, Vol. 3 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:07 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Born within a couple of years of each other, Gottfried Silbermann and Johann Sebastian Bach were acquainted, and we know that Silbermann in 1736 invited the composer to inaugurate the new organ that he had built in Dresden’s Frauenkirche. That instrument was destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945, but some thirty of Silbermann’s organs are still extant. From robust pedal stops providing a sturdy bass fundament to silvery flute stops, his instruments were famous for their distinctive sound and contemporary sources often made use of a play on the name of their maker as they praised their ‘Silberklang’. Silbermann was based in Freiberg with his workshop only a stone’s throw away from the cathedral, where he built his first great organ in 1714. One of the finest and best preserved examples of his art, this is the instrument which Masaaki Suzuki has chosen for the third installment in his traversal of Bach’s organ music, following acclaimed recitals recorded in Groningen (the Netherlands) and Kobe (Japan). The programme takes us through various forms of organ compositions, including one of Bach’s most imposing preludes (BWV 546) with its intricate fugue, the multi-sectioned Toccata in C major (BWV 546a), examples of chorale preludes and partitas. Suzuki closes his recital with the famous Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, probably composed during the same years that Silbermann was busy building the organ on which it is performed here.

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Masaaki Suzuki – J. S. Bach: English Suites (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:32:43 minutes | 3,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

A busy schedule as music director of the Bach Collegium Japan and sought-after guest conductor doesn’t stop Masaaki Suzuki from returning to his first loves, the organ and the harpsichord. With the present release he adds yet another chapter to his series of Bach’s works for solo harpsichord. After acclaimed recordings of the Well-tempered Clavier, the Goldberg variations, the French Suites and other works the turn has come to the English Suites. Composed while Bach were in his thirties it precedes other sets such as the French Suites and the Toccatas, and in his liner notes, Bach scholar Yo Tomita draws attention to ‘the stylistic traits of a youthful and ambitious composer wanting to make his mark through the use of counterpoint and virtuosity’.

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