The poetry and radiance of Bachs cello suites (BWV 1007-1012) are transfigured in these remarkable interpretations by Kim Kashkashian on viola, offering a different kind of somberness, a different kind of dazzlement as annotator Paul Griffiths observes. One of the most compelling performers of classical and new music, Kashkashian has been hailed by The San Francisco Chronicle as an artist who combines a probing, restless musical intellect with enormous beauty of tone. An ECM artist since 1985, she approaches Bach s music with the same commitment as revealed in her other solo recordings, the legendary Hindemith sonatas album and the widely acclaimed (and Grammy-winning) account of Kurtág and Ligeti.

Masaaki Suzuki was an organist before he was a conductor, and his recordings of Bach's organ works have made a delightful coda to his magisterial survey of Bach cantatas with his Bach Collegium Japan. This selection, the second in a series appearing on the BIS label, gives a good idea of the gems available. You get a good mix of pieces, including a pair of Bach's Vivaldi transcriptions. Fans of Suzuki's cantata series will be pleased to note the similarities in his style between his conducting and his organ playing: there's a certain precise yet deliberate and lush quality common to both. And he has a real co-star here: the organ of the Kobe Shoin Women's University Chapel, built in 1983 by French maker Marc Garnier. The realizations of Bach's transcriptions of Vivaldi concertos fare especially well here, with a panoply of subtle colors in the organ. Sample the first movement of the Concerto in D minor, BWV 596, with its mellow yet transcendently mysterious tones in the string ripieni. BIS backs Suzuki up with marvelously clear engineering in the small Japanese chapel, and all in all, this is a Bach organ recording that stands out from the crowd. Highly recommended.

For this hybrid SACD of famous organ works by J.S. Bach, Masaaki Suzuki plays the restored Schnitger-Hinz organ in the Martinikerk (Martin's Church), in Groningen, one of the most celebrated instruments in the Netherlands and one which dates back to Bach's time. Its bright, Baroque sonorities and Suzuki's historically informed interpretations give these performances a compelling sense of authenticity and period style. The pieces are among Bach's greatest hits, particularly the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which gives the program a decisive opening. Following that flashy demonstration, Suzuki is relaxed and almost contemplative in the Pastorale in F major, and continues his thoughtful readings in the Partita on "O Gott, du frommer Gott," the Prelude and Fugue in G minor, and the Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her." Yet he includes two sparkling virtuoso performances in the Fantasia in G major and the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, which keep the album from being too soft and subdued. BIS' super audio sound is crisp and detailed, which is no mean feat in a church recording.

Christmas Oratorio is topical, it’s also universal. It doesn’t require lights or tinsel or presents under the tree to instruct, inspire, and/or entertain, especially if it is presented in as fine a performance as this one fashioned by Stephen Layton and his cohort. Layton is the director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge (having succeeded Richard Marlow), and his choir is top-notch, as is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, mercifully identified as OAE. OAE’s roster is rife with such familiar names from the period instruments movement as Margaret Faultless (who is just that here) and Alison Bury. To mention Anthony Robson, oboe, and David Blackadder, trumpet, is not to slight any of the other players.

Bach aficionados will be delighted to find again Wieland Kuijken in this reference album coupling the Cello Suites and Gamba Sonatas (with his son Piet), originally released in 2004 and shortly afterwards out of print. As Wieland Kuijken confesses in his interesting text, he laboured over the Cello Suites with his instrument (credited to Andrea Amati) for 30 years before eventually deciding that his interpretation was ready for this compelling recording: ‘Today more than ever, I think it is a whole lifetime that one puts into these works, regardless of whatever one might say, whatever one might know.’

From the irresitably forceful opening bars of the English Suite's prelude to the throbbing repeated octaves of the D minor concerto, Richter shows why many of Bach's works are ideally suited to the piano. The Bach concerto is often regarded as a student piece, or relegated to refined performances on the harpsichord. Not here – the bookend movements are as maniacal, pulsing and driving as the best of John Coltrane or Prokofiev. The CD is worth it just for those movements, but Richter's treatment of the English Suite is equally enlightening, especially the Prelude and Gavotte.

Maria João Pires “shapes and colours every phrase, and with immaculate taste, and she makes sure the phrases end as eloquently as they begin,” wrote Gramophone in 1974. “She conveys not just the details but the relevance of every note to the whole … Best of all, she communicates everything she has discovered about the music, and it is worth having.” This Portuguese pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, Pires was one of the artists who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 5-CD box gathers together the recordings she made over the period from 1976 to 1985 and it reflects the consistent focus of her repertoire, with its special emphasis on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets and concertos, it contains works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, but also by Bach and Chopin.

Following the album Arias, her much-acclaimed debut album on Sony Classical, the German soprano returns to Bach with three famous cantatas she has never recorded before. Regardless of their extraordinary musical beauty all of these cantatas are concerned with religious considerations of grief, guilt and farewell. Based on the Italian model of solo cantata which reached its peak in the extensive output of Alessandro Scarlatti, these melodious and touching pieces highlight Schäfer´s outstanding vocal abilities and musical taste. The arias offer most delightful duets with various instrumental solo parts such as flute, oboe and violin. Christine Schäfer is accompanied by the Berliner Barocksolisten, a first-class ensemble of players from the Berlin Philharmonic who perform on modern instruments in historically informed style.

The acclaimed recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger and her ensemble 1700 team up with famous countertenor Andreas Scholl for this inspiring new album featuring the work of J.S. Bach. The album includes arias from Bach cantatas for alto, a concerto for harpsichord arranged for flute, the cantata BWV 170 “Vergnügte Ruh” and the famed Brandenburg concertos No. 2 and No. 4. Dorothee Oberlinger is one of the most amazing discoveries of recent years, an expressive virtuoso who - quite rightly - received numerous awards while still very young.

Le prestigieux Collegium Musicum créé par Telemann fut l'orchestre attitré de Bach lorsqu'il prit ses fonctions à Leipzig. Il put ainsi tester avec cette formation de nouvelles associations de timbres que l'on retrouve dans le Concerto pour clavecin BWV 1052, le Concerto pour piano forte en si bémol majeur et le Triple Concerto BWV 1044. Il s'agit parfois de transcriptions et d'adaptations, d'œuvres originellement pour violon, mais le résultat est étonnant de brio et de force expressive. Il faut écouter ce fameux Triple Concerto pour flûte, violon, clavecin et cordes porté par les couleurs de l'Akademie für Alte Musik : on y retrouve l'impulsion rythmique, la richesse de tempérament du Concerto Brandebourgeois n° 5, un esprit de danse et de fête qui privilégient sans conteste le clavier.

Hungary’s prize-winning Keller Quartet, whose account of mentor György Kurtág’s Musik für Streichinstrumente received the highest praise internationally, now focuses upon baroque music with a revelatory performance of Bach’s The Art of Fugue "The Keller Quartet take an experimental approach to Bach", writes Hans Klaus Jungheinrich, "inclining less to long lines than to ‘respiratory’ phrasing." The music breathes, yes, and the Keller Quartet’s interpretation of Die Kunst der Fuge will be one of the most talked-about Bach performances of the year.

Even in an age of thrilling countertenors, Max Emanuel Cencic stands out for the heroic scale and brilliance of his voice, his expansive lyricism, and his imagination and enterprise in choice of repertoire. Cencic has excelled as both a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, and Fantastic Cencic showcases his extraordinary interpretative range – from the great and lesser-known masters of the Baroque to the bel canto of Rossini and composers of the Romantic era from Schubert to Strauss. The third of these three CDs comprises recordings from the early 1990s, shortly after Cencic left the Wiener Sängerknaben, which are released here for the first time.

This Mass in B Minor led by Sir Neville Marriner is an excellent choice for those looking for modern orchestral instruments, lively, full adult choruses, and a solid lineup of soloists. Marriner’s performance lacks the ponderously stodgy tempos of those older recordings, but he does not bypass the beauty, spirituality, or grandiosity inherent in the music in favour of speed.

Bach transcribed the works of other composers and reused his own works for often educational purposes. This magnificently interpreted anthology by Andreas Staier is a delight for the ears, happiness enhanced by a splendid sound recording, and what instrument(s)!

Natürlich muss man die Bearbeitung, ja Entstellung von originalen Werken der Kunst ablehen - aber man sollte die Gesetze auch manchmal ruhen lassen. In diesem Fall eröffnet sich dem Freund des Bachschen Solowerkes eine neue Welt. Ganz einfach weil die Piano-Begleitung Robert Schumanns (egal wie angemessen oder gelungen) den einzigartigen Meditationen des Barock-Meisters eine ganz neue Note verleiht. Aus dem Monolog wird eine Dialog. Aus den manchmal anrührenden, manchmal nervenzerfetzenden Phrasen des Einsamens wird eine Kommunikation, ein Gemessenwerden, ein Ver- oder Mißverständnis. Das verlangt Benjamin Schmid ein ganz anderes Musizieren ab (er hat die Original-Version schon ganz großartig genommen). Und er schafft es auch hier meisterhaft.