Masaaki Suzuki and his superb Bach Collegium Japan had been in the business of recording Bach’s cantatas for well over a decade by the time they trained their sights on the composer’s motets. Their collective experience and sheer delight in the music register in every bar, as does the wholehearted conviction and spiritual engagement they apply to the sacred words of each piece. Suzuki’s choristers deal effortlessly with Bach’s near-superhuman technical demands, especially those of Singet dem Herrn and Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, and apply tender compassion to the funeral motet O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht. They also bring light and shade to the strikingly distinct movements of Jesu, meine Freude, not least by enlivening Bach’s intricate contrapuntal lines with countless details of phrasing, articulation and dynamics.
- Carolyn Sampson, Dunedin Consort, Ian Bostridge, John Butt & Polish Radio Choir
- Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble & Eric Ericson
- RIAS Kammerchor & Marcus Creed
- Collegium Vocale Gent & Philippe Herreweghe
- James Gilchrist, Nicholas Mulroy, Clare Wilkinson, John Eliot Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists, Matthew Brook, Jeremy Budd, Peter Harvey, Katherine Fuge & Julia Doyle
- Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, Freiburger Barockorchester & René Jacobs
- Frances Bourne, John Eliot Gardiner, Mark Padmore, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Stephan Loges, Katherine Fuge, Charles Humphries, Christoph Genz, Nathalie Stutzmann & Gotthold Schwarz