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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
April 30, 2010
There are some musical authorities who maintain that the Brandenburg Concertos are not premier cru Bach. While admitting that the six concertos are both summation and summit of the concert grosso, they will point out that the concertos possess neither the profundity of the B minor Mass, Passions or Cello Suites nor the contrapuntal mastery of the Forty Eight or The Art of Fugue.
Well, yes...but - and to quote John Cleese, it is a very big but - in terms of expressing and engendering sheer joi de vivre the Brandenburgs are in a class of their own - and not just in Bach's time. There is a reason this music is so popular.
The Fifth and Fourth Brandenburgs provided the highlights of Friday night's stunning concert by Concerto Köln. Which is not to say that their performances of music by Dauvergne, Vivaldi and Sammartini were anything less than superb, but, as the title of their concert ("Bach and the Concerto di Camera in Italy and France") distinctly implied, there is Bach - and there is everybody else.
The Fifth Brandenburg closed the first half of the evening and was pure delight. All three soloists were excellent, although Cordula Breuer's flute (the programme said it was a recorder, but if it so, then it was the incredibly rare transverse recorder) was almost too soft even for this very small ensemble, which, aside from the soloists, consisted of a single violin, viola, cello and bass.
But for me a performance tends to stand or fall by that remarkable cadenza in the first movement. Remarkable? I might rather say monumental; there are numerous later concertos extending to two, three or even more times the length of the Fifth Brandenburg, which have shorter cadenzas than this. And wasn't it unusual, to say the least, at this time, to write out a cadenza? (Beethoven waited until his Fourth Piano Concerto.)
Whimsy or not, I like to think that the Great Man himself was on particularly fine form during a performance one night and that afterwards his fellow musicians came up to him and said (in the 18th Century German vernacular equivalent, of course): "Johann, my man! That cadenza in the first movement really rocked; you have got to write it down!"
Wiebke Weidanz also "really rocked" in the cadenza which had that quality that all the finest performances have: of seeming much too short. As indeed did the entire concerto. Even the usually obtrusive traffic cooperated during the slow movement, an oasis of tranquility between the bustle of the outer movements.
In the Fourth Concerto Breuer was joined by Martin Sandhoff and the delicious sound of two recorders was absolutely irresistible. Again the outer movements were infectiously joyful while the lovely sound of the soloists in the slow movement made we wonder just why I hated this instrument so much when at primary school half a century ago.
The concert opened with the Quatrième Concert de Simphonie by Antoine Dauvergne.
The ensemble were able to show their quality immediately, in an opening overture of energetic stateliness, featuring some quite dazzling dynamics.
Perhaps the most remarkable movement was the finale, a virtuosic and volatile chaconne in which the "bass" line seemed to move around the ensemble (now with the cello and bass, now with the first violins) when not vanishing altogether.
Vivaldi's Cello Concerto No.23, RV407, could have come from no other composer's hand, his identity being stamped on every bar. The outer movements were energetic almost (but not quite) to the point of brusqueness, while the slow movement's accompaniment would, had it been any simpler, been non-existent.
Throughout, soloist Markus Hoffman was masterly, performing miracles of dexterity in the quicker music, while providing a gorgeous cantabile line in the slow.
The evening proper closed with a "Sinfonie" by Giovanni Sammartini, which fizzed merrily along.
I doubt very much if I shall ever become a Sammartini devotee, but if any performance was going to achieve that conversion, this would have been it.
The well-merited encore was from a concerto for recorder and flute by Telemann, particularly distinguished by the exciting drone effect from cello, bass and harpsichord.
In their quarter-century Concerto Kön have established a reputation as one of the world's leading baroque ensembles. After this first encounter with them in the flesh it is easy to understand why: they combine technical brilliance with a genuine sense of discovery and - especially in those Brandenburgs - a real joie-de-vivre.
Long may they flourish.
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