Amandine Beyer, Gli Incogniti - Bach: Concerti a Violino Certato (BWV 1041, 1042, 1052 & 1056) (2007)

Tracklist

01. Concerto pour violon No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052: I. Allegro
02. Concerto pour violon No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052: II. Adagio
03. Concerto pour violon No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052: III. Allegro
04. Concerto pour violon No. 5 in G Minor, BWV 1056: I. Allegro
05. Concerto pour violon No. 5 in G Minor, BWV 1056: II. Largo
06. Concerto pour violon No. 5 in G Minor, BWV 1056: III. Presto
07. Concerto pour violon No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042: I. Allegro
08. Concerto pour violon No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042: II. Adagio
09. Concerto pour violon No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042: III. Allegro assai
10. Concerto pour violon No. 1 in A Minor, BWV 1041: I. (Allegro moderato)
11. Concerto pour violon No. 1 in A Minor, BWV 1041: II. Andante
12. Concerto pour violon No. 1 in A Minor, BWV 1041: III. Allegro assai



Here's one of those discs that throws multiple innovations at the listener, any one of which alone might have made sense but which are a bit overwhelming taken together. You may be puzzled to see four Bach violin concertos listed; what's happening is that two of them, BWV 1052 and BWV 1056, were transcribed from harpsichord concertos on the theory that Bach himself made similar transcriptions in the opposite direction. Tempos are quick, with a nervous, slightly pace-bending energy at odds with the usual tempo stability of Baroque instrumental music. Finally, the "orchestral" passages are taken with one instrument per part, in keeping with an approach more often heard in Bach's choral music (where the chorus consists of single voices) but sometimes mooted for concertos as well. This last decision seems especially debateable in music modeled on the concertos of Vivaldi, which were, on the testimony of none less than Jean-Jacques Rousseau, composed to be played by an orchestra of young women. If you grant that the experiment is worth trying, you may still find that it works markedly better in the two actual violin concertos than in the two transcriptions. Despite all of the booklet's claims for the violinistic quality of the melodies of the two harpsichord concertos, the music turns into a shapeless mess here. Violinist Amandine Beyer and the ensemble Gli Incogniti assert the novel approach that the polyphonic element in Bach's concertos ruled over the spectacular soloistic concept of the Italian style, and they reduce the emphasis on the solo part accordingly. It's an odd way to play these pieces, but competently and briskly executed, and the engineering from the new Zig Zag imprint of Harmonia Mundi is sharp. In all, though, anyone considering this disc should sample and compare extensively; the minority of listeners who are thoroughly experiment-minded are most likely to enjoy it.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac CD-Rip]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac Web]