The Washington Post 3/27/07:   If there are any doubts that the Bach Collegium Japan is one of the most  astonishing baroque ensembles on the planet, they were dispelled Friday night in a performance at the Library of Congress that was so beautiful, so riveting, so ferociously intense in every way, that Coolige Auditorium may never be the same.

Johann Sebastian BachThe Collegium specializes in authentic performance of baroque music, using the period instruments and techniques that have become virtually standard -- and often fussily academic -- in concert halls everywhere. But there was nothing stuffy about  Friday’s performance. Harpsichordist and artistic director Masaaki Suzuki brought such penetrating focus to this sound that every shred of affect was burned away – leaving nothing but pure music in its wake.

And what music!  The all-Bach evening opened with the Orchestral Suite no. 2 in B minor, a lyrical and wonderfully inventive set of dances. Pixie-esque flutist Liliko Maeda turned in a bravura performance on the one-keyed wooden flute – perhaps the prettiest and most unforgiving instrument known to man – negotiating the finger-snarling passagework with spirit and enviable nonchalance.

That was followed by the searing Harpsichord Concerto no. 1 in D minor, one of Bach’s darkest and most moving works. The harpsichord can be hard to love -- Sir Thomas Beecham compared it to “two skeletons copulating on a tin roof” --  but in Suzuki’s hands it became an instrument of transfiguring power, with a virtuosic and unrelenting performance that cut straight to the heart.


Masaaki Suzuki  at the keyboardThat was hard to top, but Ryo Terakado and Natsumi Wakamatsu tried, and their reading of the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor was so fiery and intense that ears were melting throughout the hall.  Unforgettable performances, topped off with an account of the Brandenburg Concerto no. 5 that, like everything else on the program, raised the bar on Bach performance to new and spectacular heights.