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.