Sunday Classics: "Brandenburg"s for the holidays, Part 2

Notice anything unusual about Bach's Sixth Brandenburg Concerto? Here Claudio Abbado conducts members of the Orchestra Mozart in the first movement at the Teatro Municipale Valli, Reggio Emilia, April 2007.

by Ken

In last week's Part 1, we began our traditional holiday-time traversal of Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos with complete performances of Nos. 1-3. This week we've eased into our task of completing the sequence by pausing to sample Nos. 4 (Friday night) and 5 (last night).

Again, it's helpful to remember that in assembling this set of concertos for presentation to the Margrave of Brandenburg (presumably from works that were mostly, if not entirely, already written), Bach was demonstrating some of the range of what he could do with the Baroque concerto medium. I think this explains why the six concertos, and sometimes even movements within concertos, are written, not just so differently, but for such differently configured instrumental ensembles.


PLAYING WITH STRINGS

Perhaps the most easily overlooked of the Brandenburg Concertos are the two written for strings only, Nos. 3 and 6. Tthe exclusion of non-string instruments limited the obvious ways in which Bach could achieve striking effects, but that doesn't mean he was any less striking in his inventiveness. By way of a Brandenburg warmup, I thought we'd hear their perky finales.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G, BWV 1048:
iii. Allegro

The ensemble Tafelmusik dispatches the finale of No. 3 at Toronto's Trinity-St. Paul's Centre, May 2009.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat, BWV 1051:
iii. Allegro

For once the members of the Freiburg Chamber Orchestra don't sound as if they're running for their lives!


WHY ARE WE HEARING THESE MOVEMENTS? TO FIND OUT,
AND TO HEAR BRANDENBURGS NOS. 4-6, CLICK HERE.

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