Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

A few years ago, I visited Schloss Köthen (not too far from Berlin) with one of my sisters, in a kind of Bach pilgrimage. Bach worked in Köthen from 1717 to 1723 as Hofkapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, and much of his instrumental music, including the six Brandenburg concertos, dates from that era.

I have seven sets of the Brandenburgs on record. Busch and the Busch Chamber Orchestra (1935) and Klemperer and the Philharmonia (1960) are personal favourites, since I greatly respect both Busch and Klemperer in Bach. Menuhin and the Bath Festival Orchestra (1959) have a sentimental value, since I was at a concert in the Festival Hall in London and heard them play all the Brandenburgs (with Menuhin making a real cat's breakfast of the violino piccolo part in the first Brandenburg). Richter and the Munich Bach Orchestra (1968) are good middle-of-the-road recordings. Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra (also 1968) do not greatly appeal to me, neither does Adrian Boult conducting the LPO (1972).

The Brandenburgs are usually described as “orchestral” works, but they sound best when played by a small chamber orchestra. Like septets, octets and nonets, they do not really require a conductor, although someone to organise balance and tempi is often useful. Bach called them six concerts avec plusieurs instruments in his dedication to the Margrave of Brandenburg. In the Festival Hall performances by Menuhin's band, I particularly recall the visual effect in the third Brandenburg of seeing the counterpoint travelling from left (first violins) to right (basso). An example of stereophonic listening.

To succeed on record, the Brandenburgs need a fine set of instrumentalists, a good balance so the polyphony and counterpoint can be heard, and a good recording. My favourites of the six concertos are numbers 3, 4, 5 and 6. I am not over-fond of brass instruments in chamber works (numbers 1 and 2, although David Blackadder's trumpet in no.2 with Pinnock almost converts me). I am currently renewing my acquaintance with these works by listening to my seventh set, the European Brandenburg Ensemble directed by Trevor Pinnock (2006). This is the best of my bunch of seven recordings. For the missing second movement of the third concerto where Bach left only two orchestral chords, almost certainly expecting some kind of improvisation, Pinnock's band inserts a highly appropriate solo violin piece (a superb improvisation by Kati Debretzeni); to me, this is the best solution yet to the (maybe) “missing” music. In the first concerto, the violino piccolo really does not make much of a mark (Menuhin would have been thankful), but what can a violino piccolo do against two horns, three oboes and a bassoon? It's as much Bach's miscalculation as one by the recording engineers. You can combine a violin solo with flute or clarinet, but not with oboe or brass, Herr Bach. For a change in these works, the brass instruments do not give cause for unease concerning intonation where Pinnock's band is concerned. I also do not note one single movement in the whole set where I would disagree with Pinnock's chosen tempo for the music.

Anyway, around 300 years since they were written, the six Brandenburgs make superb listening. Eternal music. Not too much music written today is going to make 300 years, I suspect. I love the intense polyphony of the Brandenburgs; number six sounds positively seventeenth century. Music to keep to hand.

Joseph Haydn's String Quartets

For most of my nearly 70 years of listening to music, I usually passed over the music of Joseph Haydn. I probably thought that a man who wrote 106 symphonies and 30 or so string quartets could not be a serious candidate for anything other than Tafelmusik. My loss; Haydn's music rarely explores the heights and depths of human emotions, but it is highly engaging music to listen to as I am currently discovering exploring Haydn's string quartets in a giant 10-CD box recorded for Naïve by the Quatuor Mosaïques, recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Not being a Haydn fan in the past, I must have bought the box many years ago as an impulse buy.

Haydn was always so bloody cheerful! Not for him the depressions and fears in the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert .... and Shostakovich! Haydn is characterised by the inventiveness of his music, his ever-present good humour, and the sheer professionalism of his writing. The recordings by the Quatuor Mosaïques come over well, with only an occasional rasp from the violins to remind us that this is a recording “on original instruments” (as the saying goes). The playing suits Haydn's music. So far I have listened to the three quartets of Op 77, and the six quartets of Op 76. Next up: the six quartets of Opus 64.

Sabine Devieilhe - Chanson d'Amour

The best song writers come from Germany-Austria, France, and Russia. Not much from the Spaniards, the Italians, or the British (the latter not since the 17^th century). I have been listening to a new CD of French mélodies, sung by Sabine Devieilhe. Titled “Chanson d'Amour” it collects 29 French mélodies by Fauré, Poulenc, Ravel and Debussy. I never tire of Devielhe's voice; it is a young, attractive soprano. Happy listening.

Khachaturian's Violin Concerto, and Antje Weithaas (again)

My taste in music centres on the 18^th and 19^th centuries, plus the first couple of decades of the 20^th. I have little interest in most of the music of the past 100 years (with significant exceptions, such as that of Prokofiev and Shostakovich). Around the middle of the past century, however, appeared four violin concertos that appeal to me greatly: the concerto by Benjamin Britten with a very English flavour, the concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold with a very Viennese flavour, the first violin concerto of Dmitri Shostakovich with a very Russian flavour – and the violin concerto by Aram Khachaturian with a very Armenian flavour.

I have been listening to a recording of the Khachaturian concerto played by the German violinist, Antje Weithaas. It is difficult to decide what to admire most about Weithaas's performance: her extraordinary sense of rhythm, her consummate technical expertise, or her exemplary ability to adapt to a music written in a very different idiom. She joins Julian Sitkovetsky (with Niyazi) and Leonid Kogan (with Monteux) on the podium for this concerto, thanks also to excellent and idiomatic support from the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie conducted by Daniel Raiskin. Highly recommended listening to counteract the morbid world of Covid-19.