Search - Koopman: cnd/Amsterdam Bar.. :: J.S. Bach: Cantatas, Vol. 22

This twenty-second--and final--volume of cantata recordings contains two of Bach's latest cantatas (BWV 30 and 80), including the secular model for BWV 30 and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's arrangement of two movements from BWV 80 dating from after 1750. Also included are the four Kyrie-Gloria masses of the late 1730s; they are very closely associated with the cantata repertoire of the 1720s. These masses are based on selected movements of cantatas dating from the period 1723-26; after an interval of ten or so years Bach reworked them, in most cases very thoroughly. Maestro Ton Koopman was awarded the 2006 Bach Medal by the city of Leipzig on June 5, 2006, the final day of this year's annual Leipzig Bach Festival. The award honors the significant contribution of the sixty-one-year-old Dutchman to Bach performance and scholarship. Koopman performed at the festival, which is run in conjunction with the Bach-Leipzig Archive, with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Born in 1965, French contralto Nathalie Stutzmann made her debut in Paris at the age of twenty singing Bach, and since then her dark-grained, expressive singing has brought her to the forefront of her vocal category. The acclaimed series of complete Bach cantatas with the Amsterdam Baroque conducted by Ton Koopman, originally begun on the now-defunct Erato label, has been revived by Challenge Classics. Koopman and his choir & orchestra continue to uphold a standard of tremendous vividness and joy in their immaculate performances of Bach's most impressive opus. The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, founded in 1979 by Ton Koopman, are a group of musicians from all over the world with a particular passion for the Baroque. Their recordings have won numerous awards. The Amsterdam Baroque Choir, founded in 1992, consists mainly of young Dutch professional singers. Born in Zwolle, Holland in 1944, Ton Koopman decided very early in his musical studies to specialize in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, using authentic instruments combined with a performing style based on sound scholarship. Koopman's extensive activities as a soloist and conductor have been recorded on a large number of LPs and CDs for labels including Erato, Teldec, Philips, and Deutsche Grammophon. Begun in 1994, this series was called "the recording project of the nineties" by The Guardian in England, and was awarded 1997's Deutsche Schallplattenpreis "Echo Klassik" in Germany. The series continues to feature the scholarly contributions of Professor Christoph Wolff, one of the world's leading experts on the music of Bach. Includes illustrated booklet with extensive documentation and complete texts of the cantatas in German, English and French.