Bach: Motets

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.