Bach: Six Concertos [Import]

In the booklet that accompanies this set, maestro Pinnock notes, "...in 1982 I stood in awe of Bach's discipline and order, today I relish his sense of daring and musical subversion. Eager to cut through any conceptions of period style I invited players from different countries and of different generations to join my new voyage of exploration." I don't know about "subversive" but these performances do bring out Bach's wide emotional range from the sunlit joy of Concerto # 2 to the shady restraint of # 5. This set caused me to rethink these masterworks which is quite an accomplishment for pieces that we tend to take for granted and listen to on autopilot.
There are dozens of recordings of the Brandenburgs available but if you have room for one more please give this beauty a try.

The world isn't dying for another good reading of the Brandenburgs, but here's a fine one. I was especially impressed that everyone plays in tune and with real style. Pinnock leads a band of musicians who make you feel this music, not stand apart and admire it form a distance. Accusations of being too emotional aren't likely to apply; the day is long past when "authentic" meant dry and academic. Tempos adhre to a lively average that's extreme in no direction. Now that period performance has conquered the Baroque field entirely, mature interpretations are emerging that can compete with great musicians like Casals and Menuhin whose style seems outdated but at no cost to their musicality.

For a long time I kept Benjamin Britten's famous Brandenbugs on the shelf as my reference, even though it wasn't in period style (modern instruments were emplyed). I think I can safely put it aside for this new set, which is totally satisfying even to holdouts like me. Avie's sound is close up and beautiful (As usual, the harpsichord is miked larger than life but not egregiously so.)

Pinnock's new Brandenburg set emphasizes function over form, and I can hardly criticize him for that. In the Fourth, he really highlights the triplet figures in the horns as well as the timbral nuisances from the consort of wind players. The recorders in the Fourth have a simply gorgeous tone, showing how far period bands have come. And the sinewy, gutty strings in the Third and Sixth are both "authentic" but tonally satisfying. Indeed, the latter, taken at a spirited tempo, as the modern trends dictate, is particularly fine, Pinnock and his players really showcasing Bach's wonderful polyphonic writing.

Still, which these pieces certainly aren't as heavy as the Passions, I would have liked a tad more weight in the Fifth, where Pinnock's moderate tempo and the somewhat soft-edged playing from the various soloists makes this performance sounds slightly diffuse, where more incisive playing and stronger attacks would have made this performance self-recommending.

Despite this, it is nice to hear Bach played with élan and joy (God forbid it sound as if performers actually enjoy playing this music) rather than sounding like the academic-exercise of so many other performances. And, as no music collector can have only one set of the Brandenburg concertos, I can imagine few listeners not enjoying these releases, even if others like Harnoncourt or Alessandrini, for example, deliver slightly more edge (at the expense of emotional warmth) in this music.