Except for those carried away by the mere idea of pictures with their records not, after all, very revolutionary in this television age most people, surely, would demand, as the absolutely essential pre-requisite for a CD-V, a performance that is musically satisfying; how many want to re-run performances, however attractive to look at, that they don't really enjoy? The present set of Brandenburgs sounds suspiciously like the CD set (Teldec (CD) ZK8 42823 and 42840, 2/85) that my colleague NA greeted with very mixed feelings (which I fully share): as interpretations, these range from the exhilarating to the irritatingly mannered, the last three concertos including some stylistically very debatable features.
In the first movement of Concerto No. 4, for example, I see no justification for the solo violin disrupting the 3/8 metre from bar 83 with alternate bars of 4/8 by lingering on the first note which is all the more indefensible since at a similar spot later (bat 235) the presence of other instruments in imitation prevents her doing the same. Even more upsetting are the abrupt adoption of a slower speed for three viola passages in the first movement of No. 6, only to hurtle ahead again (with heavily dogged accompanying repeated notes) a few bars later, and the rhythmic aberrations in the last nine bars of its second movement. I like the slight inegalites introduced in the Andante of No. 4 (though shouldn't the phrasing of the passage from bar 61 match that from bar 13?), but think the molto rubato treatment of No. 5's harpsichord cadenza, proceeding in a series of gusts, less appropriate to J. S. Bach than, perhaps, to his son Emanuel.
There are serious reservations to be made, also about the balance. Although Concerto No. 5 is basically a harpsichord concerto, and the instrument is seen in the centre foreground, it sounds ridiculously faint, merely a background clatter (but things improve a little for the finale): the flute (further away pictorially) and the violin are far louder, so that the second movement's interplay of the three is all awry. Nor is it much good having close-ups of the violino piccolo in No. 1, if its sound emerges as so minuscule (making nonsense of the dialogue with the oboe in the Adagio). I don't want this to become simply a catalogue of complaints—though I must also point out that from track 4 onwards all the cues listed for Side 1 are one step wrong. There is a great deal of highly accomplished playing from all the Concentus Musicus members (it was a bit unkind of the cameras to show Harnoncourt giving dirty looks to the brilliant trumpeter for a couple of high notes not quite in tune); and there is, for example, a fine 'lift' to the finale of Concerto No. 3, taken fast and lightly.
Visually, the baroque library of the Wiblingen monastery makes a very handsome venue, and the camera work is fairly good, with mostly accurately timed cutting or panning between images (only in the finales of Nos. 2 and 3 does there seem some uncertainty which instrument or group to select), and interestingly letting us see the natural-horn players' right-hand technique. It is unfortunate that in Concerto No. 2 the oboe is more than once completely masked at an important entry. Bach's appellation of ''flauti d'echo'' in No. 4 is taken literally, the two (excellent) recorder players being distanced in a gallery—and walking back quietly during the finale just in time to join in at bar 23! Harnoncourt himself takes up the cello in No. 3 and the Andante of No. 2, and the gamba in No. 6, but for the rest of the time, in his conducting, uses his penetrating eyes to mesmeric effect. Those who can accept his interpretative eccentricities will doubtless enjoy this set more than I did.'