Customer Reviews

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos / Il Giardino armonico

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a professional singer who specializes in Baroque and early repertoire. This has made me a firm believer in the historical performance movement. It has done so much to give new shape and dynamism to works that were heretofore rendered mostly in broad, lugubrious strokes. The movement continues to evolve, and as it does the amount of color and depth infusing this repertoire continues to grow and take on new dimension. No longer are many of us content to hear Monteverdi and Lully sung with the extremely bright, straight tones of Emma Kirkby and Nancy Argenta, but rather wish to hear the more appropriate lush and shimmery vocal colors of singers like Sandrine Piau, Guillemette Laurens, Christine Brandeis and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

With that in mind, I've heard more recordings of the Brandenburgs than I care to name. And I'm just as tired of the anemic sound and too-fast tempi of ensembles like Hogwood's as I am of the too slow, syrupy interpretations of Furtwangler and Karajan. This recording by Il Giardino Armonico is the only recording I've heard that manages to make these extraordinary works really speak.

Antonini bridges the gap between rich lyricism and crisp articulation better than anyone I can think of who performs this repertoire. My favorite of all the Brandenburgs is #4, and the five-voice fugue in the last movement is the standard by which I judge all the best interpretations of this work. Antonini does the most remarkable things with this piece. The subject is rendered by each voice in the most song-like, tuneful, vocal manner. Instead of thumpy, fast, dry (for most period recordings) or wobbly, incoherent, unintelligible (for most modern instrument recordings) here is great legato playing without any loss of crispness or transparency of texture. Where the line may jump a fifth, he connects the lines where most conductors demand extreme separation, and then creates the most astonishing, perfectly shaped messe di voce you can imagine. That said, all the entrances of the fugue subject are completely distinguishable, and no entrance has the same quality as any other. All the instruments are allowed to let their unique color and texture come forth, and Bach surely understood how important this was when he orchestrated the work. Furthermore, all of the silences in the work are sharply drawn by the ensemble and as dramatic as you might hear in any Beethoven symphony. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, and I was enormously grateful that, finally, someone got it right.

The other great measure of a high-quality period recording of this work is the natural horn playing on the Brandenburg #2. While it's a hair rough and decidedly masculine (the latter not being a bad thing), it's extremely powerful and expressive, and the player (Gabriele Cassone) understands how to make his instrument speak and dazzle, rather than just hammering out a technically perfect performance, which is all that most natural horn players can hope for.

It's rare that I don't have a complaint about a recording, but this is that exception. I recommend this piece heartily and unqualifiedly.

This is by far the most energetic and consistent of the Brandenburg sets I've heard. Fast, furious, always keeping Bach's dialogue even and ordered, even in the fast movements, and they are quite fast. If you're used to the stuffy pomp of Sir Neville Mariner or the smooth spit and polish of Karajan, these readings will seem hurried and sloppy, but if you like your baroque loud and dynamic, this is the set to have. Also, Konrad Hunteller and the Camerata of the 18th Century turn out a similar reading well worth investigating--Matthew E. Holcomb

This is the best Baroque recording of the Brandenburg Concertos that I have ever listened to. The norm is a well-balanced even tempo orchestration. This performance breathes fire. If you listen to it on a good system, you don't just hear the music - you feel it.

I think when I finally sit down and write my book on how the whole world of art music--from listeners to performers to composers--went totally haywire in the final days of the "Empire" (This'll happen around 2035 AD), I'll try to get permission to quote the series of reviews over head and down below. There's a modern myth that needs to be demolished that says that lovers of classical music are smarty-pantses. Read a bunch of Amazon classical reviews and then go peruse those for a few Aerosmith albums and note the similarities. While I'd argue that classical music aficionados should be a little wiser than most I've heard more mature and inciteful comments from the mouths of Beanie Baby collectors than I have from a lot of Bach and Beethoven fans (I'm immediately recalling one sophisticate who pronounced all music written after the death of Schubert as worthless). What classical music fans have more than anything else is opinions, largely because it's a fertile field for them which is still no excuse for dumb ones. Let me preface with this:

Teldec's marketing of this music has nothing to do with the musicians, the performance, or the composer. If you've ever spent an afternoon in a meeting with marketing "people" you'd know that their contact with anything we would know of as "reality" is tenuous. Current hot imbecilic maxims are about selling sizzles and not steaks, or boxes and not what's inside the boxes. Corporations actually think it's a good idea these days to hire marketing people who aren't fans of the product as it interferes with their spinning, lying, and duplicities, even if they aren't needed. Marketing people should all be carefully placed in a big sizzling box and the lid should be nailed shut.

The silly reputation of this particular group of performers is not the issue here, especially if we're worrying about whether this is going to be "rock and roll" Bach or not. Refer to the previous paragraph and welcome to the Brave New World.

This is a period instrument recording, meaning I, at least, expected blatting horns and fast speeds. Sometimes with recordings like this I expect speeds that many would deem psychotic. I once read that conductors in the early 1800s played like they were at a race track. No less a light than Felix Mendelssohn was mentioned as being a speed freak--the same Mendlessohn who was no taker of risks and thought his good friend Berlioz was a nut case. I assume this happened because there may have been something traditional about it. Classical music slowed down when its audience stopped being younger passionate artists and intellectuals and started being blue-haired ladies living in Philadelphia, middle-aged white guys, and modern Cherubinis. Big Band music used to be played at crazy speeds until it became nursing home music. Henry Rollins stopped shouting and now sounds like he's running for selectman. Slower speeds usually indicate the audience wants to be lulled to sleep and not energized.

The harpsichord sounds metallic because harpsichords often sound metallic. That's why Mr. Piano invented the piano some years later on and why Chopin did not write etudes for harpsichord.

If I've owned only four or five different recordings of a major work I don't tend to get all hot and heavy pro or con on a newer version. Reason? Well, zowie wowie, exposure to that few recordings hardly qualifies me as an expert. I'd feel like a fool pronouncing, say, Kleiber the Younger's Beethoven Fifth the all-time best or worst recording of that symphony based on that kind of meager sampling. Plus, in a crowded field there really is no best, just a clump of standouts near the top of the list.

All this said, let's actually look at this recording for real. First, sonically, it's a marvel. Beautifully engineered with stupendous presence. Second, these kids--punk rockers, rappers, Scientologists, or whatever the marketing jerks portray them as--clearly know how to play their instruments with style, accuracy, and panache. Third, the conductor knows how to make Baroque music breath and wiggle and surge and flow without making it sound like Klemperer and his big-arsed orchestra back in the 1960s (a recording I dearly love). On the other hand this interpretation thoroughly lacks the sewing machine quality that was a deep problem with many period instrument performances, coincidentally during the reign of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

This recording struck me immediately as a well-reasoned and balanced performance--hardly academically correct (AC not PC), barely delightfully psycho like Goebel's on DGG, and not exactly likeably parlor and wine-and-cheese party safe like older versions by Marriner. I'd call this a vibrant and accomplished set of Brandenburgs perfect for those that want a modern period instrument recording, that are not interested in musico-political cat fights, and that are above needing the juvenile imprimaturs of "all-time greatest" or "best Brandenburg concertos ever!!!"

I'm giving this five stars because I like it a lot, it'll probably be my most frequently played one for a while (of the 756 recordings of this work that I own), and it does everything right. Aesthete below has it nailed.

Sinful was the first thing that came to mind the first time I listened to this CD. In fact I thought I had made a mistake after spending a very long time going through every sound bite of every BC CD that Amazon.com had. Since my musical tastes are rather broadband instead of serial, like many classical listeners (no offense intended), I decided to remove all my many years of preconditioning brought about by classical training and think like an artist instead of a classical musician. By the third listen I was in love with IGA.

They bring a passion to Bach that I have never heard before. Why is this important? Because passion is the difference between playing and performing. I've been listening to and playing Bach since I was 8 years old. I've always thought of playing Bach as an athletic event instead of a form of self-expression. Thanks to this CD I have changed the way I play. I now break the rules, cross the line, play vulgar and street like, and I enjoy every minute of it.

IGA may not be for everyone, but for those who want to hear the human spirit instead just mathematics executed with razor-sharp precision, you might want to check these guys out.

I bought this on the recomendation of the Rough Guides, 'Classical Music 100 CDs' and very glad I am!

It is an 'authentic' performance, full of intelligent individual responses to the music, but above all, enthusiastic.

The openning trumpets, if at first a little suprising, clearly signal what you are going to get - life, energy, cobweb-blowing-away sound that gets to the heart as well as the mind.

Risk it, it is worth it!

The version of this CD that I bought does not show the relatively staid cover of the version offered here, with the orchestra members in concert dress. Rather, it shows a mock-up of a wall (in Berlin, presumably) spray-painted to make it look as if Il Giardino Armonico were a Euro hip-hop group doing Gangsta Bach, instead of a period instrument ensemble. No doubt this backfired in terms of sales, which is why Teldec opted for a more traditional classical music cover. No doubt, too, the "Gangsta" cover suggests that the playing here is more iconiclastic than it really is. I was expecting to have my ears blown off, and my whole concept of this music turned on its head, as happened when I heard their "Four Seasons" disc, but the Brandenburgs aren't meant to blow your ears off, and IGA seems not to have found any penetrating insights into the music, so this recording ends up being enjoyable, but not up to its full potential.

I have owned about 5 different Brandenburgs in my life--some of them syrupy (Karajan), stupefyingly dull (ASMF/Marriner), or just plain bland and unexciting (AAM/Hogwood). My favourite is still Harnoncourt's 1964 Telefunken release, which showcases Harnoncourt in his prime: bright sound, energetic playing (not just fast tempi), with the period instruments obviously an exhilarating discovery for both performers and listeners. This IGA version is a nice supplement (since I don't own the Harnoncourt on CD)--it's occasionally sassy and innovative, all of it is performed well (even at breakneck speed), and while it may give the purists a heart attack, it's not quite innovative enough to reinterpret the Brandenburgs completely. It seems, like that Gangsta cover, something of a misstep for IGA.

This is a "rockn roll" Brandenburg and I like it. Sure... first concero horn sounds awful blatty but at the same time it is fun.

In the second concerto horn sounds a bit blatty too but in this concero it is at the same time beutiful, charming.

This performers are mostly Italians, Vivaldi specialists and this is something that shows a lot here but that is ok because Brandenburg concertos are a bit Italian in style and Bachs Orcestra suite is more french in style.

This is pure joy, sound is very fine and this is one of these personal versions that has something extra but if you like your Brandenburg a bit more "serious" (but not dull) I also recommend Jordi Savalls version on Astree/Naive records that is a mid priced DDD remastered version that also comes with good sound, great playing but is a bit more balanced comparing to this about tempi and Savalls version has a clearer inner texture. I would not be without any of them.

This two-CD Teldec recording is a joy. It has the feel of an all-out, let-'er-rip performance. Il Giardino Armonico is the ensemble recommended to me by a member of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He was right--all six concertos are gems--nothing ho-hum here!

Amazon's service is unbeatable. During the Christmas rush, the CDs arrived a day earlier than promised. Many thanks to all from A Delighted Listener!

I have always loved listening to the Brandenburg concertos, but have never heard them played with this quite amazing verve, energy and, well, life, as this. If you want the precise and purrfect rendering, this would be disappointing, but if you want a beautiful recording of these played as never before, then you will find yourself listening to them every day, as I do.