Bach: Brandenburg Concertos No. 4-6

Album review

After the fall of the Third Reich, the core of the new German Democratic Republic was formed around the provinces once called "Mitteldeutschland" -- Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg, Vorpomerania, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. At the political center, if not geographically, was Berlin, the former imperialist and then communist capital. It is thus somehow appropriate that the last three of the concertos Bach composed in 1720 for Christian Ludwig, Margrave, of Brandenburg -- who never played them and later became a General in the army of Fredrick the First King of Prussia -- should be performed here by the Kammerorchester Berlin under music director Helmut Koch and recorded by Berlin Classics in 1972, the middle of the political existence of the DDR.
Typical of their time and place, the performances are not particularly impressive. Koch and the Kammerorchester Berlin regularly recorded for Berlin Classics, dutifully turning in uninspired performances of Baroque and classical repertoire on a mid-sized, modern-instrument orchestra, and this disc is no exception. Koch's tempos are by no means slow but they are far from fast; his tone is not quite weighty but it is hardly light; and his interpretations could be better characterized as robustly cheerful than as aesthetically blissful. The Kammerorchester's textures are thick but not altogether turgid, the technique is skillfully pragmatic rather than brilliantly virtuosic, and the colors are more steel and concrete than wood and brass. For those who disparage the elegance of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and eschew the warmth of I Musici, the modern-instrument chamber orchestra version of the Brandenburg Concertos to have is this one. Berlin Classics remastered stereo sound is bigger and closer on compact disc than it was on LP, and thus a huge improvement. However, the relentless tapping sound before the start of the harpsichord cadenza in the first movement of the Fifth Concerto is still maddening.

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