This recording is a collaboration between three absolute masters: Florilegium, one of the world’s most outstanding period instruments ensembles, Johannette Zomer, the soprano blessed with a clear, radiant voice, animated by a high musical intelligence and the genius that is Johann Sebastian Bach.

 

In 1737, at the peak of his career, Bach received a devastating public critique of his work by his former pupil, Adolph Scheibe. According to Scheibe, a son of the Enlightenment, Bach’s music was ‘confused and turgid’ to the extent that this ‘excess of art’ bordered on the unapproachable. It seems incredible today that any such criticisms could be levelled at the ‘greatest composer of all’. And yet, given the highly-crafted art music of the Second Suite dances, the tightly structured figural density of Sinfonia BWV146, or the extreme penitentiality of Cantatas BWV199 and 82a, it is interesting that Bach remains one of the most widely popular of all classical composers. 

 

‘Johannette Zomer is an appealing soprano, pure and bright in tone, graceful in phrasing.’ BBC Music Magazine on Johannette Zomer