Programme Notes

by Sandy Burnett

As far as I know, this is the greatest piece of music ever to have been inspired by bumping into someone in a music shop! Sent to Berlin on an errand for his employer in 1719, Johann Sebastian Bach met Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg, who as the youngest son of the Great Elector Frederick William was a fairly big cheese. Bach followed up their encounter by sending the Margrave a musical gift, in the form of these great Brandenburg Concertos, two years later.

Concerto No. 1

Two horns are placed at the top of the score of the first concerto in F major; they enrich the opening music with raucous fanfares, even trampling on the harmonies of the other instruments at times! A violino piccolo provides another scoring twist; it’s a violin tuned a minor third higher than the normal instrument, with a tone that’s a little more piquant. Rounding off the concerto’s first three movements in fast-slow-fast style is a sequence of dances, including a French-style minuet and a Poloinesse or Polish dance.

Concerto No. 2

Bach brings us another surprising front line of instruments in his second concerto. Standing out from the ranks of the ripienists, or ensemble players, are four quite different concertists: trumpet, recorder, oboe and violin. Although the trumpet remains silent in the exquisite central movement, it’s there as a first among equals on either side, the opening movement bouncing along with pulsing quavers and a firm rhythmic grip, and the closer a spectacular fugue that splits its main theme between all four of the protagonists.

Concerto No. 3

This one is very much a string thing, and a chance for Bach to have a lot of fun with numbers. Concerto number three is laid out for three violins, three violas, three cellos and the continuo section, and in three movements; the first of those – the most famous Brandenburg moment of all – grows out of a tiny melodic fragment made up of three (that’s right, three) notes. Striking is the way that Bach invites each of the individual string players to step into the limelight one by one, much as the young Felix Mendelssohn was to do in his great string Octet a century later. 

Concerto No. 4

The concerto form was an Italian invention, and the work of Bach’s that stays close to that Italian model is the fourth in the set. Essentially it’s a solo violin concerto, spectacularly agile at times, with added interest from a pair of recorders. Oddly, in the score they are referred to as “fiauti d’echo,” probably so called because Bach asks them to come up with a beautiful echo effect in the reflective middle movement.

Concerto No. 5

Usually the harpsichord played second fiddle (so to speak) to the other instruments in ensemble settings, but in this fifth concerto Bach emancipates the instrument and writes what is in effect the first harpsichord concerto in history, complete with virtuoso moments that are breathtakingly audacious. Nonetheless, it’s just one of three solo instruments in the fifth concerto, the second being the violin, which you might expect in this context, and the third one which you might not. In German ensembles of the 1720s, the transverse flute – elegant, fashionable, and imported from France – was still very much the new kid on the block.

Concerto No. 6

This concerto being number six, the number-loving Bach lays out the music on six lines. Offering his violins the rare chance of a breather, he gives the top lines to two violas, places a pair of old-fashioned viola da gambas in the middle, and writes a semi-independent cello part to go alongside the continuo on the bottom. The central, gamba-free, movement hints at a private world of music being played at home for domestic pleasure. And the closing Allegro begins with the distinctive sound of two violas playing in unison quite high up in their range, a solo opportunity for violas that in the music of this era comes along all too rarely.