Douglas J. Fisher asks: >Hello Friends, I see that Berkshire Record Outlet is offering "Bach, >The 200 Church Cantatas", for about $4 average a disc. Is there enough >difference between them that it would be worth having a complete set, or >are there only certain ones which are essential? Recommendations and >opinions are most appreciated. I'm probably the wrong person to ask, being a Bach freak and a firm believer in the proposition that you can never have too many CDs. If you have so many CDs that they prompt someone to ask whether you've listened to them all, you definitely don't have enough CDs, let alone too many. For me, it depends mainly on who the performers are, what cantatas you haven't heard, and so on. I myself don't own all the cantatas - just slightly more than half. However, every one I've heard has been wonderful and in a distinctive way. The reason I don't own them all is that I'm very fussy about performance. Bach's cantatas are difficult to do well, and they are so rich that they pose a challenge to interpretation in my opinion greater than that of the Beethoven symphonies. It's hard enough getting a good set of all nine symphonies from one interpreter. The difficulty is at least squared with the cantatas. I know of no integral set that nails every single one of the cantatas. On the other hand, some cantatas are so little-known, they will appear only on integral sets. I can't bear a bad performance of these works. A dull performance or one that misses the point is even worse. I'm not a fan of Rilling, for example, so I warn you away if he's the conductor. Everything tends to sound the same with him, and he seems asleep. So who's the conductor? Steve Schwartz