At a time when the international recording industry is depressed, there are two new cantata projects (each around 80 CDs) in the works, one in Germany and one in Japan.
The indefatigable John Eliot Gardiner, for instance, is spending his year touring churches throughout Europe performing all of Bach’s nearly 200 surviving sacred cantatas on the liturgical days for which they were composed. Bach, some 1,200 pieces on 153 CDs packaged in cardboard cubes that fit into a small suitcase. It kicked off last August with the most ambitious recording project in history, a release of the complete works of J.S. And because Bach is Bach and because this anniversary coincides with the year 2000, it is likely to be the biggest classical music anniversary that any of us will live to experience. The classical music business treats big, round-number anniversaries of births and deaths as pretty much equivalent.
Friday is the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death.
