Sunday Classics: As the names remind us, the concerto and the sonata (and the sinfonia and the opera) came out of Italy

This is the YouTube poster's quite nice off-the-air VHS recording of the fine Korean violinist Kyung-Wha Chung playing the Largo of Bach's E major Violin Concerto in 1982.

"What can one say of the C-sharp minor Adagio [of Bach's E major Violin Concerto]? Is there not, far beyond the depth and profundity of this psalm, in which all grief and all bliss are united, everything that we are able to comprehend? Does there not wake in us a presentiment, an awe of the most holy mysteries, upon which no human word can touch?"

-- the uncredited annotator of Epic's U.S. issue of I Musici's
Philips recording of the Bach violin concertos

by Ken

Why don't we start with the performance of that Largo under annotation? It's from the same I Musici LP from which we heard first just the Largo (in Friday night's preview) and then the whole (in last night's preview) of Bach's D minor "Double" Violin Concerto, with then-violinist-members of the heart chamber ensemble Roberto Michelucci and Felix Ayo. Each violinist was assigned one of the two solo-violin concertos, and while Michelucci seems to me the more interesting violinist, he got the A minor Concerto. Still, Ayo isn't violinistic chopped liver.

BACH: Violin Concerto No. 2 in E, BWV 1042:
ii. Largo

Felix Ayo, violin; I Musici. Philips, recorded c1960

As long as we're here, we might as well hear the whole Bach E major Concerto. Which we'll do in the click-through.

TO HEAR THE WHOLE BACH E MAJOR CONCERTO, AND
CONCERTOS BY TELEMANN AND HANDEL, CLICK HERE

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