Product Details

• Actors: Masaaki Suzuki, Bach Collegium Japan
• Format: Classical, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: December 4, 2001
• Run Time: 116 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B00005OCKV
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #141,108 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #87 in	Movies & TV > Musicals & Performing Arts > Classical > By Composer > Bach, Johann Sebastian
  #89 in	Movies & TV > Musicals & Performing Arts > Classical > Sacred & Religious

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
One of the greatest musical treatments of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ receives a performance that is musically precise and stylistically close to what we now know of Bach's ideals. Western classical music is becoming more and more the property of musicians and audiences in the Far East, and this performance shows that it is in good hands. The participants are all specialists, including the Japanese orchestra, which plays on period instruments, and their work meets the highest international standards. Masaaki Suzuki, who conducts and plays the harpsichord, is a complete and thorough musician, deeply involved in the emotional overtones of the music as well as technical questions of tempo, balance, and phrasing. His vision comes to terms with the full complexity of the music. His soloists are all excellent, with particularly notable work by Gerd Tuerck as the Evangelist and Robin Blaze in the alto arias. --Joe McLellan

Product Description
The choir and the orchestra of the Bach Collegium Japan, stars among the celebrated baroque specialists, perform the "St. John Passion" with only a small ensemble of about 50 musicians (as was the custom in Bach's day) under the former Ton Koopman-student Masaaki Suzuki. Soloists: Gerd Tuerck, Stephan MacLeod, Chiyuki Urano, Miduri Suzuki, and Robin Blaze.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One for the ages.., April 12, 2006

By	Stephen Quinn (Huntington Beach, Ca) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you have the patience to let it work, this performance will pierce your heart with its solemn beauty. As distant and alien as Bach's music sounds to ears accustomed to being assaulted by "rap" and other aural garbage, it lifts the listener to the realm where Christ's sacrifice becomes intensely personal, yet magnificently universal. For those not familiar with the work, it tells the story of Christ's passion and death, interweaving texts directly from the Gospel of John, sung by soloists representing each part, with choral texts reflecting man's response to this wondrous yet heart-breaking tale. The result is a timeless masterpiece capable of moving the heart of even the most faithless and cynical. The scaled down forces in this performance make for a wonderful transparency to the sound. Each soloist brings just the right degree of personal identification with his or her part. And thankfully, the English subtitles make every word count.

If at this Easter season, you seek something less brutal, yet no less profound in its directness and impact than Mel Gibson's Passion, Bach will not let you down.