Organisationsrecensioner
2The Consort's performance had the feel of chamber music about it, especially in the Christmas Oratorio extracts which followed. These were billed as "everyone's favourite arias and choruses" - a phrase which can generally be loosely translated as "the bits we thought would need least rehearsal". They were performed with polish and confidence here, however.
Everything that could be desired in a historically informed performance of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos is presented in Philip Pickett's brilliant set with the New London Consort, released in 1993 on L'Oiseau Lyre. This version with period instruments and an ensemble of a size according to Baroque norms is much more than a dry run-through of these beloved works. It is a clever and highly expressive re-creation of Bach's most popular concertos, re-imagined through the artistic and philosophical connections and conventions that likely were found in them by Bach's contemporaries, most probably by Bach and the Margrave of Brandenburg himself. The conductor's liner notes provide detailed explanations of the aspects of the Brandenburg Concertos that would have been read with allegorical meanings, and some of the musical choices Bach made can be seen as symbolic representations or keys to deeper meanings that educated listeners familiar with Baroque art and classical mythology would have understood.
