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GRAMOPHONE (07/2025)
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BIS2741 (SACD)

Code barres / Barcode : 7318599927411

Reviewer : . Malcolm Riley

Volume 7 of Suzuki’s Bach collection is by way of a companion to Vol 6, completing the collection of Leipzig chorales that Bach worked on around 1739, carefully revising his youthful Weimar works. The rest of the album consists of the six Schübler chorales which were published in 1747?48 – essentially organ transcriptions of orchestral originals and based on much earlier cantata movements. The best known of these will be BWV645, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, played here with a refreshing sense of purposefulness.

As before, the three-manual Schnitger instrument in the Martinikerk, in the northern Dutch city of Groningen, does sterling service. Suzuki’s playing is consistently clear, meticulously dextrous and well balanced, with plenty of registrational variety on display. Highlights include the bubbling Trio on Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV664, the scurrying Wo soll ich fliehen hin, BWV646, and most poignantly of all, BWV668a, Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein, the last of the Leipzigs, on which Bach was working in his last months. This recording contains the version published in the original edition of Die Kunst der Fuge.

The recorded sound gives a lovely sense of the spaciousness of the acoustic while retaining some of the instrument’s idiosyncratic mechanical noises. A very satisfying programme, strongly recommended

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