At last another superlative performance of these often-recorded concerts. To us, this music is still as fresh as 300 years ago. Bach, on the other hand, could never have guessed that his music was now encased in optical discs, scanned by beams of light even more concentrated than the curls of his wig. For the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, it is almost a quarter of a century since they made their
… first recording of the concertos. Concertmaster Georg Kallweit wants to record it every year, because of the quality of the music. Such a distance in time naturally produces progressive insight. Like the instrumentation of the continuo. The double bass was not yet known in Köthen at that time, Bach's designation 'violone grosso' is from a later date. That is why the lighter violone in g carries the bass section here. The performers do not pretend to have a monopoly on wisdom with this kind of insight. They simply wanted to try out how these concertos originally sounded. (HJ)more
