今シーズンはバッハ・コレギウム・ジャパンが初めて《ロ短調ミサ》を演奏してから25年の節目でもあります。首席指揮者・鈴木優人の指揮で、初めて演奏した地であるサントリーホール 大ホールにて皆様をお迎えします。世界中で騒乱が止まない今の時代に聴く、終曲の「われらに平和を与えたまえ （Dona nobis pacem）」はどんな言葉でも表せない豊かさをもって響きます。
Bach Collegium Japan announces the lineup for the 2025-2026 season!
The Bach Collegium Japan is pleased to announce the lineup for the 2025-2026 season!
In addition to the six subscription concerts, the 2024-2025 season will mark the 300th anniversary of Bach’s choral cantatas with the “The 300th Anniversary Project of Choral Cantatas”.
New members will be accepted from November 3 (Fri).
Details will be announced at a later date.
For the 2025-2026 season, Suntory Hall will be added as a new venue for the subscription concerts, with a schedule that includes three performances each at Tokyo Opera City and Suntory Hall. As in previous years, the season will begin with the St. Matthew Passion during Lent, followed by the Mass in B Minor, which drew a full house in 2024. Additionally, a new series titled “The Path to Beethoven” will commence, looking ahead to the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s passing in 2027. The 300-Year Chorale Cantata Project will also reach its grand finale, bringing us even closer to the essence of Bach’s music.
As for current members of our Regular, Society, and Friends programs for the 2024-2025 season, we will send out renewal information in early November. New memberships will open on Saturday, November 23. Further details will be announced later.
◆About the subscription concerts
“During the Holy Week in Japan, the St. Matthew Passion must resound.”
The 2025-26 season will be the 35th season since Music Director Masaaki Suzuki founded the Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ) with this mission in mind. This year, we welcome rising tenor star Shimon Yoshida as the Evangelist and sought-after baritone Jochen Kupfer as Jesus. Additionally, the alto solo will be sung by Marianne Beate Kielland, marking the return of a female singer to the alto role.
This season also marks the 25th anniversary of the BCJ’s first performance of the Mass in B Minor. Under the baton of Principal Conductor Masato Suzuki, we welcome you to Suntory Hall, where it was first performed in 2000. In a time of unrest, the concluding “Dona nobis pacem” resonates with an indescribable richness.
In October, as part of “The 300th Anniversary of Bach’s Chorale Cantata” Project’s 8th performance, we will feature four splendid chorale cantatas composed in 1724. With her remarkable voice, Kristen Witmer will return to the BCJ stage.
As a prelude to the Advent season, we welcome you with the ChristmasOratorio in November. Originally performed over six days from Christmas through the New Year and Epiphany, this concert will present all six parts in one day. Take a moment to imagine what Christmas was like in Bach’s time and enjoy this extraordinary experience.
In January 2026, as we approach the 200th anniversary of his death in 2027, we launch the “Path to Beethoven” series, tracing the great composer’s journey. For this groundbreaking first concert, we present Beethoven’s early masterpieces, Symphony No. 1 and No. 2, along with a sinfonia by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who greatly influenced Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven himself. Masato Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan will portray the dynamic transition from the Baroque to the Classical era over the next three seasons.
In March 2026, we will conclude the project “The 300th Anniversary of Bach’s Chorale Cantata,” a profound two-year endeavour led by Masaaki Suzuki. For this final performance, we welcome countertenor Tim Mead, who starred to great acclaim in the BCJ’s opera series “Giulio Cesare”in 2023, as one of the soloists to crown this grand finale of the pilgrimage to the 40 chorale cantatas.
We welcome you to Tokyo Opera City and Suntory Hall for the 2025-26 season. Join us as the Bach Collegium Japan embarks on this new season, traversing history from Bach to Beethoven with boundless passion!
◆About The 300th Anniversary Project of Choral Cantatas
Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723, and from May of the following year, 1724, to the end of March of the following year, he composed exactly 40 special cantatas called “choral cantata”. Choral are hymns sung by the congregation in chorus, and although church cantatas are more or less related to choral, the cantatas of this year are called by this name because they had a special structure. In fact, 40 choral cantatas were written in 1724 because that year fell exactly 200 years after 1524, when the religious reformer Martin Luther, in collaboration with many musicians, published several hymnals for the congregation to sing, It was recognized as the “year of the establishment of hymns. So this must have been a celebration of the bicentennial of the establishment of the hymnal. Now, 300 years later, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s hymnody and the 300th anniversary of Bach’s choral cantatas, we, the Bach Collegium Japan, would like to perform 40 choral cantatas during the two years from 2024 to 2025.
──Music Director Masaaki Suzuki
Bach Collegium Japan announces the lineup for the 2024-2025 season!
The Bach Collegium Japan is pleased to announce the lineup for the 2024-2025 season!
In addition to the six subscription concerts, the 2024-2025 season will mark the 300th anniversary of Bach’s choral cantatas with the “The 300th Anniversary Project of Choral Cantatas”.
New members will be accepted from November 3 (Fri).
Details will be announced at a later date.
◆About The 300th Anniversary Project of Choral Cantatas
Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723, and from May of the following year, 1724, to the end of March of the following year, he composed exactly 40 special cantatas called “choral cantata”. Choral are hymns sung by the congregation in chorus, and although church cantatas are more or less related to choral, the cantatas of this year are called by this name because they had a special structure. In fact, 40 choral cantatas were written in 1724 because that year fell exactly 200 years after 1524, when the religious reformer Martin Luther, in collaboration with many musicians, published several hymnals for the congregation to sing, It was recognized as the “year of the establishment of hymns. So this must have been a celebration of the bicentennial of the establishment of the hymnal. Now, 300 years later, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s hymnody and the 300th anniversary of Bach’s choral cantatas, we, the Bach Collegium Japan, would like to perform 40 choral cantatas during the two years from 2024 to 2025.
──Music Director Masaaki Suzuki
◆About the subscription concerts
Each year, the BCJ’s new season begins with Good Friday and Holy Saturday of the 2024-25 season, the last week of March, and will be conducted by Principal Conductor Masato Suzuki, who performed the “Matthew Passion” to great acclaim in the Netherlands in 2023. In addition, Benjamin Bruns, who served as Evangelist for the 2019 re-recording (which won a Gramophone Award), will appear on the BCJ’s “Matthew Passion” stage for the first time.
May’s Church Cantata Series (vol. 85) commemorates the 500th anniversary of Luther’s hymnody and the 300th anniversary of Bach’s choral cantatas, and is the first in a series of “choral cantata projects” to be launched with a two-year dry run. Please pay attention!
In July, the first of the “B to B” series of composer genealogies will trace the path from Buxtehude to Bach. Buxtehude was the organist at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lübeck, which is highly acclaimed for its excellent instruments, and there is an anecdote that Bach was deeply fascinated when he heard him play the organ. He composed not only organ music but also many religious works for Protestant churches. This concert will feature “Membra Jesu nostri” and Bach’s cantata, and will offer a genealogy of religious music from the 17th to the 18th century.
The September concert will feature Bach’s “Messe in h-moll” which was performed to great acclaim by packed audiences in Paris and Madrid during the 2022 European tour. In 2023, the BCJ was the first non-Western European group to perform the finale of the prestigious Bach Fest, performing the same piece at St. Thomas’ Church to great acclaim. This is the triumphant return of Masaaki Suzuki and the BCJ.
In October, the second installment of the “B to B” series will follow the path from Bach to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was deeply fascinated by Bach, so much so that he converted to Lutheranism and revived the “Matthew Passion”. We will perform his masterpiece of symphonic works with chorus, Symphony No. 2 ” Lobgesang”, together with J. S. Bach’s Cantata No. 80 (arranged by W. F. Bach), and enjoy the musical journey leading to the Romantic period.
In March 2025, the fifth performance of the Choral Cantata Project (Church Cantata Series vol. 89) will feature four chorale cantatas composed in 1724. The 2024-25 season will conclude with Cantata No. 3, ” Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid”.
We hope you will all look forward to Bach Collegium Japan in 2024, as we continue to move forward with new challenges!
