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