153 CDs representing nearly four decades of Bach performance on
period instruments “a lifetime’s exalted listening, invariably
presented with love, enthusiasm and conscientious musicianship.”
- Gramophone The Complete Bach Edition, 153 CDs in 12 volumes
comprising Bach’s complete works performed by world renowned Bach
interpreters on period instruments, constitutes one of the most
ambitious projects in history. The Complete Bach
Edition represents the culmination of a process that began over
five decades ago, in 1958, with the creation of the DAS ALTE WERK
label. After initially triggering an impassioned controversy,
Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s belief that “Early music is a foreign
language which must be learned by musicians and listeners alike”
has found widespread acceptance. He and his colleagues searched
for original instruments to throw new light on composers and
their works and significantly influenced the history of music
interpretation in the second half of this century. Their ideas
have been shared by many fellow musicians, among them Ton
Koopman, Il Giardino Armonico, Luca Pianca and Andreas Staier,
all of whose performances appear in the COMPLETE BACH Edition. As
an entirety, the Complete Bach Edition offers listeners the
chance to rediscover the astonishing developments in Bach
interpretation of the last forty years and the tonal beauties of
Bach’s works performed on period instruments. Without Nikolaus
Harnoncourt’s and Gustav Leonhardt’s groundbreaking accounts of
the cantatas, a complete Bach edition would have been
inconceivable. But with the of Bach's Complete Sacred
Cantatas as inspiration, not to mention Harnoncourt’s 1970 St.
Matthew Passion and Gustav Leonhardt’s legendary 1965 account of
the Goldberg Variations, the early 1990's found Teldec in an
extraordinary position: able to embark on the artistic, financial
and logistical adventure to record and license s of the
remainder of Bach’s oeuvre and present a complete edition in time
for the 250th anniversary of his death. From Schleicht, spielende
Wellen, BWV 206, recorded by the Monteverdi Choir Hamburg,
Amsterdam Chamber Orchestra, Jürgen Jürgens and André Rieu in
1963 to the Trio in A major, BWV 1025 with Werner Ehrhardt and
Gerald Hambitzer recorded in April 1999, COMPLETE BACH chronicles
nearly four decades of Bach performance on period instruments. By
1995, the year in which the project the Complete Bach Edition was
conceived, Teldec had already committed approximately two thirds
of Bach's oeuvre to disc. Subsequently the company produced
approximately twenty new s specifically for The Complete
Bach Edition. Many of these new s were of works never
before available on disc, including chorales, as well as works
for organ and works for harpsichord. Criteria for a Complete Bach
Edition The Complete Bach Edition includes all works that modern
scholarship regards as authentically composed by Johann Sebastian
Bach. Where Bach made extensive changes to works in order to
adapt them to meet the demands of later performances, the
alternative versions have also been included. Incomplete works
have been included when their musical substance was deemed
valuable, although where fragments consist of only a few bars,
these are not included. COMPLETE BACH also includes a handful of
reconstructions of lost works, the existence of which is fully
verified but which have not survived as such. Finally, a few
inauthentic pieces are included, where they are inextricably
associated with Bach’s name and are so familiar that their
exclusion would have been regretted. “I have never felt that
Bach’s work was in any way routine […]. Each new cantata, each
new aria is an adventure, an exciting discovery. […] I know of no
other composer who explores the whole range of music from the
strictest counterpoint to romantic expressionism and who at the
same time pushes back the boundaries of that world as
comprehensively as Bach” - Nikolaus Harnoncourt Groups of Works
Included in Teldec’s Complete Bach Edition Central to the
Complete Bach Edition are the sacred cantatas, recorded between
1971 and 1989 by the Concentus Musicus Wien under Nikolaus
Harnoncourt and the Leonhardt Consort under Gustav Leonhardt with
soloists including Barbara Bonney, Thomas Hampson, Paul Esswood,
Kurt Equiluz, Max van Egmond and Robert Holl. This was the first
complete edition of the sacred cantatas performed on period
instruments in the history of the gramophone and remains so to
this day. The set won the Erasmus Prize in 1980, before it was
even completed. Ton Koopman and his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra
subsequently recorded the secular cantatas. Bach wrote over 400
chorale settings but left no collection of his own in the form of
a published or publishable volume of chorales. His pupil, Johann
Philipp Kirnberger, went to great lengths to make good this
omission. Between 1784 and 1787 four volumes appeared in print
containing a total of 371 chorale settings, most of which are
familiar to us from the composer’s cantatas, motets, oratorios
and Passions. But there are around 186 chorales that cannot be
ascribed to surviving works or were part of lost compositions or
teaching material. These have been collected and recorded in
their entirety for the first time ever by the Rundfunkchor Berlin
under its British-born conductor Robin Gritton. With regard to
the rarely performed or recorded Schemelli Songs, there is
disagreement about the authenticity of several of these. For the
Complete Bach Edition Teldec has selected those known to be
authentic and most likely to be authentic; they are performed by
Christoph Prégardien, Klaus Mertens, Ton Koopman and Jaap ter
Linden. Bach’s fame in his own lifetime rested not only on his
gifts as a composer but also, and more especially, on his
exceptional abilities as an organist. Since 1994, Ton Koopman has
recorded Bach’s complete works for organ on famous historic
organs in the Netherlands and Germany. Foremost among these are
the instruments in Freiberg Cathedral, built by Gottfried
Silbermann, an organ builder with whom Bach had a professional
association, and the organ in Hamburg’s Jacobikirche, built by
Arp Schnitger For Bach’s complete works for keyboard, the
Complete Bach Edition has chosen to use the harpsichord. Included
are such releases as Gustav Leonhardt’s groundbreaking account of
the Goldberg Variations as well as recent s of Bach's
transcriptions of the sonatas after Reincken by Andreas Staier,
toccatas by Bob van Asperen and concertos, fugues and other works
by harpsichordist Michele Barchi. Barchi also plays the Suites
BWV 996 and 997 on a historic lute-harpsichord specially built
for this Edition. Additional lute works are performed by Luca
Pianca, an internationally accled lutenist and theorbo player
and a co-founder of Il Giardino Armonico. The Cello Suites were
recorded by Nikolaus Harnoncourt in 1965 and appear in the
Complete Bach Edition for the first time on CD. The edition
includes Bach's solo violin works performed by Thomas Zehetmair
and the violin sonatas performed by Alice Harnoncourt (violin),
Nikolaus Harnoncourt (viola da gamba) and ert Tachezi
(harpsichord). Of the orchestral repertoire, the Brandenburg
Concerti are represented by the highly accled Il Giardino
Armonico s released in 1997. The orchestral suites are
performed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the harpsichord concerti by
Gustav Leonhardt. Also included in the Complete Bach Edition are
Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 1970 legendary of the St Matthew
Passion with Concentus musicus Wien and the Arnold Schoenberg
Chor as well as his 1995 of the St John Passion with
the same forces.