Bach - Brandenburg Concertos / Freiburg Baroque Orchestra

Starring:Bach, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
This is sheer delight. The Brandenburg Concertos, a landmark in the history of music, receive a bright, spirited, highly skilled performance, using period instruments and baroque performance techniques. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra has members with virtuoso skills, who take the spotlight gracefully for solos but also play with true ensemble spirit, exactly what the music requires. The Brandenburgs are a brilliantly contrasting set of masterpieces, exploring a variety of forms and textures from the intimate viol ensemble (already old-fashioned in Bach's lifetime) to a big-band sound that looks forward to the classical orchestra.

Amazon.com

This is sheer delight. The Brandenburg Concertos, a landmark in the history of music, receive a bright, spirited, highly skilled performance, using period instruments and baroque performance techniques. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra has members with virtuoso skills, who take the spotlight gracefully for solos but also play with true ensemble spirit, exactly what the music requires. The Brandenburgs are a brilliantly contrasting set of masterpieces, exploring a variety of forms and textures from the intimate viol ensemble (already old-fashioned in Bach's lifetime) to a big-band sound that looks forward to the classical orchestra.

Description

During the years when Bach was in the service of the courts of Prince Leopold in Cothen, he had his own orchestra and was contracted to compose a great deal of instrumental music. This gave him an opportunity to try new techniques and to develop his own instrumental style. The six Brandenburg Concertos belong to these masterpieces, which he composed for a small ensemble. The joyously infectious performance of these masterpieces by The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra demonstrates both the pleasure and highest professional standard that can be reached.

Customer Reviews:

Great DVD.......2005-09-07

Amazing performance and the sound and video quality is very good. Good camera work too. It's interesting that there's no conductor as they're going by the 18th century style, so they are a little more animated than most classical performances (only because they need to keep some sort of time/expression with the missing conductor). If you're looking for a good performance, this is probably the best DVD on Amazon for that.

What's the hurry???.......2005-08-19

Yes, these are expertly played, even impassioned, renditions of Bach's historic concertos, but I don't care what "period practice" says about faster tempos being "correct". To me, the poetry and existential heartbeat of these pieces are ruined by these sweat-stained, high velocity tempos with blurs of notes racing past so fast I'm surprised I didn't hear a Doppler Effect! Where goes the melody when every concerto is running to catch a bus?

Glad I bought this.......2003-02-10

This is a very well done and enyoyable DVD. I own quite a few classical music DVDs and this is definitely my favorite.

Excellent musicians, beautiful settings, great sound and camera work.

Enjoyable.......2001-12-17

This is a very nicely played set. The camera work and the
sound are impeccable. The set is performed in the "mirror room" at Cothen, chandeliers and all. It is very fancy, and atmostpheric. It appears to have been a 2-part German TV series, transcribed to DVD. This perhaps explains why there are no "extras" (no interviews with the music director or musicians, no brief tour around the Cothen site or discussion of how a historic performance might have been).

This is not an attempt to visually recreate a period performance. It is a lively performance by an excellent group of modern musicians expertly playing their period instuments.

I give it 4 stars only for the lack of extra goodies.

No Extras.......2001-10-23

One of my sub-hobbies is collecting recordings of the Brandenburg concerti. I was glad when we were able to start seeing the players, on LDs and DVDs, and I did like this recording a lot. It has good video and pretty good sound.

As an old (ex-)trumpet player, I always pay special attention to the second concerto. Several things caught my eye (ear?). The trumpet player is Friedemann Immer. I don't know much about him, but he did a good job. I have one other recording including him, a Musical Heritage B-minor mass. Amazon gives six CD search hits on him: another Brandenburg, two other CDs, and three "limited availability". Their DVD search give none. (Searching on "Actor"; it's set up for movies.) He is playing an unusual trumpet. It is probably in F, and has three or four "shortening holes"(also called note holes, under the right middle fingers and thumb; he never uses the middle finger, so I'm not sure about that one.). These occasionally show up on natural trumpets to bring certain notes closer to in-tune. I've never seen four. In a fair amount of hunting through resources I have not been able to find one even approximately like it. There is a well known engraving of Gottfried Reiche, Bach's Leipzig trumpeter, holding a coiled trumpet reported to be likely the one used in the second concerto. No note holes are evident. Any natural trumpet playing in the clarino register (the octave with a nearly complete diatonic scale) is physically demanding. F is a high trumpet to begin with, and the second Brandenburg goes one note over, to high G. Immer, no spring chicken, negotiates the concerto with no sign of strain or effort -- quite an accomplishment. Only a small minority of trumpeters can even play the piece. He (or maybe head fiddler von der Goltz) has chosen not to trill the Fs in the opening or closing figures, even though the echoing oboe does so. This is unique in my experience. (When trilling, Immer uses a jaw trill, instead of the more common tongue or even shake trill.)

The violinist nearest the camera, Daniela Helm I think, uses an idiosyncratic bow grip, shortening up. Her part is the "piccolo violino", one tuned a fourth higher than normal, used here, and that may be standard in that case. I don't know. You see seven and maybe even six-string viols in this group, also.

This DVD would have been a fertile field for extra materials, dwelling on the unusual instruments, the performance decisions made, names and biographies of the members (soloists names only are given on the case and disc credits), etc., but there are none.

The tempi are very good, and so was the camera work. I was annoyed by the excessive motions of many of the musicians, both seated and standing. It was like sea creatures on coral. Are they trying to be the Rolling Stones of classical? The musicians are generally physically attractive (Is that a Freiburg Baroque Orchestra criterion?), but the makeup seemed a bit too much on some. The venue was attractive and appropriate.

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