John Eliot Gardiner was halfway through recording all of Bach’s 198 cantatas when Deutsche Grammophon pulled the plug. He decided to continue and release them himself. And how’s it going? “We have practically no overheads because it’s run from home. And the musicians have agreed to accept royalties rather than fees. The break-even for each disc is around 5,000 to 6,000 and the first album sold 16,000. So far it’s gone better than any of us could have hoped. We’ve got hundreds of subscribers for the whole series of 52 CDs. Any profit we make goes straight back into the financing of the next batch of records.”