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Bach – Music for Christmas
WCFSO – December 2011
Last weekend’s Bach celebration at the WCFSO featured such a fabulous array of music that it proved impossible to choose just one piece to share. So I made a mini-mixtape featuring excerpts from our performances of two Christmas cantatas and the Sixth Brandenburg. I led two of the pieces from the harpsichord; more details on soloists and movements are in the SoundCloud player:
I find it almost impossible to believe that the manuscript of six concertos presented by Bach to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721 does not exist in digital form [despite having been published in several different facsimile editions]. That is, until now!
Thus far I have scanned Bach’s title and dedication pages and his autograph of the complete Sixth Brandenburg Concerto. Above are a few pages from this digital debut but I would suggest heading over to my Flickr to view the entire manuscript – it is without question worth a closer look.
If you are in Iowa you can hear this piece and much more by Bach and his contemporaries performed tomorrow night at the WCFSO.
Following up on two earlier posts about Brandenburg 3 here is a look at another of the six famous concerti grossi, courtesy iconoclastic Bach intepreter John Eliot Gardiner and intrepid chamber orchestra English Baroque. The focus this time is the final work of the set – BWV 1051 for two violas, two gambas, cello and continuo – as seen from the player’s point of view.
I’m having a blast as a player in this piece myself, leading from the harpsichord this week at WCFSO.
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Bach - Cantata BWV 174 - 1. Sinfonia
John Eliot Gardiner & the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestra
Bach Cantatas Vol. 26
Recognize this?
The musical material is of course the opening movement of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto, re-scored in wildly imaginative fashion for a large ensemble of solo and ripieno strings, horns, oboes and bassoon. Bach frequently borrowed from himself – especially when pulling together music for weekly church services – but this so-called ‘parody’ movement may be his most elaborate and fanciful. An amazing listen.
The original version of Brandenburg 3 is on tap this weekend at the WCFSO, along with a raft of other festive pieces by Bach and his contemporaries.
This is where I’ve been spending large chunks of my time the past few weeks, preparing for Saturday’s Bach-fest at the WCFSO. I’ll be leading the concert from this lovely harpsichord, built by North Carolina maker Richard Kingston and graciously loaned to us by the UNI School of Music. Among the many gems featured on the program is the piece I was working on over the weekend – Bach’s festive Cantata BWV 63, composed for Christmas 1714. [We are performing the duet ‘Ruft und fleht den Himmel an’ with Iowa vocalists Jeff Brich and Elisabeth Bieber.]
Stay tuned for more posts related to this concert; in the meantime hear the complete repertoire on Spotify.
