Johann Christian Bach wrote more than a dozen sinfonie concertanti during the 1770s, probably for performance at the famous Bach-Abel concerts, at which the leading London instrumentalists of the time appeared. They are delightful pieces, less purposeful than his symphonies of the time and written on a leisurely scale – the very notion of the multiple concerto presupposes a fairly expansive piece in that all the soloists are bound to have their say. Add to that Bach’s keen ear for instrumental combinations, and his love of symmetrical patterns in his music, and you have a recipe for rather long and sometimes rather repetitive pieces. The C major Concerto, which uses these procedures in the central Larghetto as well as the first movement, gives the impression of being the most spacious of those here, partly because it has the most soloists – and Bach also allows the orchestral wind, which includes a pair of clarinets as well as flutes and bassoons, some share in the argument. This concerto is particularly interesting for the almost Mozartian way in which its thematic material is worked in the first movement; but the piece is anyway very enjoyable for its beguiling parade of instrumental colour and its happy musical ideas. It is well played, on modern instruments, by this Hungarian group, who have an excellent feeling for J. C. Bach’s particular dialect of the galant style.
Of these four works, the only one hitherto unrecorded is that in F for oboe and cello (allegedly two oboes, but the second has little to do and is not really a soloist at all). Its first movement is particularly attractive and the oboe playing here is sweet-toned and expressive; the cello soloist, who also directs the ensemble, is not the most polished of the group and once or twice the intonation is less than impeccable. The oboist reappears as soloist in the very appealing slow movement of the two-violin concerto, where the violinists simply join the tutti; in the rest of the concerto, a spacious first movement and a minuet-rondo finale, he is silent. The A major work, consisting only of a leisurely 6/8 Andante and a gavotte finale, is perhaps the finest of the four, with its graceful dialogue in which the instruments, as it were, reinterpret each other’s music by turning it in different directions when they take it up, much as in Mozart’s violin-viola Sinfonia concertante.
All these works receive very capable performances and the conductor allows the music enough time to make its points gracefully; clearly he recognizes that J. C. Bach’s music does not tolerate being hurried. A very attractive record, as long as you are not impatient and are prepared to let the music unfold in its own sweet way.'