Bach Harpsichord Concertos BWV 1052, 1055, 1058, 1056
A Bach disc full of personality and fun from the Stradivaria Ensemble
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johann Sebastian Bach
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Mirare
Magazine Review Date: 9/2009
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
Stereo
Catalogue Number: MIR085
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Bertrand Cuiller, Harpsichord Daniel Cuiller, Conductor Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Stradivaria Ensemble |
Author: Jonathan Freeman-Attwood
Bertrand Cuiller plays his red-blooded harpsichord (a copy of an anonymous French instrument) with dazzling virtuosity, wit and lyricism, each of the players seeming unusually responsive to the soloist’s inflections. Take the D minor, whose outer movements are mesmerisingly gilded by Cuiller and his colleagues, where the Adagio – often anonymously delivered – is shaped with compelling coherence and pungency.
The G minor Concerto (a later adaptation of the A minor Violin Concerto) is not often performed in this pragmatic transcription but here, and in the more intimate and familiar exchanges of the F minor (BWV1056, and only surviving in this form), rhythmic character and well judged embellishment spring effusively from strong and directed bass-lines. There is an authority, too, in the ringing tenderness of the second movement of the G minor, whose bittersweet affekt is underpinned by an exquisite “heavy laden” rhetorical accentuation. If the intonation is a touch “gamey” here, and perhaps a little less acceptably in the equivalent point in the A major, nothing can detract from the thoughtfulness, personality and fun which radiate from this wonderful recital.
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