JS BACH Brandenburg Concertos
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johann Sebastian Bach
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Berlin Classics
Magazine Review Date: 04/2015
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 88
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 0300593BC
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(6) Brandenburg Concertos |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Concerto Köln Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer |
Author: Nalen Anthoni
Their playing is technically remarkable. But with few exceptions – the finales of Nos 4 and 5 which are not scurried, the Affettuoso of No 5 very expressive – these performances all too often reflect only a sound-facsimile of the notes. Tempos are swift but are rarely enlivening because rhythm is unyielding; and a rigid drive leaves little room for dynamic shading or varying harmonic emphasis. Certain movements – the first of No 2, the third of No 3, the first and third of No 6 – feel hustled. Some of these characteristics may be ascribed to Gerald Hambitzer, whose insistent continuo playing in, for example, the Andante of No 2 holds the music to the bar-lines; and in the first movement of No 4 his prominence within the ensemble is close to distraction. He is indeed impressive in the first movement of No 5 – here better balanced – but his playing seems like virtuosity for its own sake. The two chords marked Adagio in No 3 are decorated as is common, though Thurston Dart, peerless in his day but now out of fashion, considered them ‘a punctuation mark’ and uncommonly interpolated the Largo from Bach’s Violin Sonata, BWV1021.
Would that the few exceptions from Concerto Köln had been the norm. But the ‘aesthetic deviation from the regular’ that Carl Seashore believed was integral to ‘the artistic expression of feeling in music’ is not always a part of their intuitive impulses.
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