Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra - J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concertos BWV 1046-1051 (2005)

Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Now THERE are three three things that people might think should never go together, like McDonalds, breakfast and burrito. But do they ever go together -- and I'm talking about the first trio, not the second. I first heard these performances, or at least some of them, over forty years ago while walking down the hallway of my residence house in college. A friend was playing the start of the Brandenburg No. 4, and I was very much struck by it. Poking my head in the open door, I discovered it was Klemperer conducting, and I kept that fact with me through the years. I never went out and obtained the recording, and it was only decades later that, returning to that isolated memory, I searched out and found this compact disc edition, and discovered my memory was not faulty. These renditions, of course, are the antithesis of period performance, but they are far lighter on their feet than one might expect -- this is anything but the big dose of molasses the unexpecting listener might anticipate. The music proceeds at a measured pace -- not plodding though perhaps a bit slower than some might prefer in places, but the tempos never seem wrong to me. The crystalline, geometric sense of Bach's music is there, and while there's an inevitable degree of Romantic tinge in these interpretations, I say so what -- it's all beautiful.