BACH: Concerti, Suites and Sinfonias - The Aulos Ensemble

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Concerti, Suites, and Sinfonias

THE AULOS ENSEMBLE

J.S. BACH (1685-1750) Concerto in C Minor for Oboe, Violin, Strings, and Basso Continuo, BWV 1060 Allegro (4:58) Adagio (4:47) Allegro (3:24)

Brandeburg Concerto No. 5 for Flute, Violin, Obbligato Harpsichord Strings and Basso Continuo, BWV 1050 Allegro (9:52) Affetuoso (5:14) Allegro (5:18)

Sinfonia in F Major "lch steh' mit einem Fulz im Grabe" for Oboe, Strings, and Basso Continuo BWV 156 (2:26) Suite in B Minor for Flute, Strings, and Basso Continuo, BWV 1067 Ouverture (6:04) Rondeau (1:40) Sarabande (2:36) Bourées I and II (2:11) Polonaise and Double (3:04) Menuet (1:11) Badinerie (1:30) THE AULOS ENSEMBLE

Your “Weimer”, "Cöthen" and "Leipzig": These three locations can be used to neatly divide the towering musical legacy of J.S. Bach an arrangement analogous to the "Early," Middle" and "Late" groupings habitually bestowed upon Beethoven's output. The tryptych approach for both of these musical geniuses has undeniable utility but can sometimes be misleading.

It was in 1713, during his employ as organist to the Duke of Weimar, that Bach first encountered the then new Italian music of Antonio Vivaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, Arcangelo Corelli and the other violinist-composers.

The Duke's young nephew, Prince Johann Ernst, had developed a passionate fondness for this fare and had brought some of these concerti (recently published in the Netherlands) back with him as additions to his uncle's library.

Bach had a favorable impression, particularly so in Vivaldi's case--for he thought sufficiently well of the latter's music to arrange six of his Concerti Grossi for solo keyboard. And in some of his subsequent original works (the F major Concerto in the Italian Manner, BWV 971 springs immediately to mind), Bach assimilated the style in all its specifics and immeasurably transcended it—an observation that, likewise, applies to several of the Compositions heard on this recording.

Indeed, Leopoid was an accomplished player of three instruments– the clavier, the violin and the viola da gamba – and it was under his aegis that Bach spent what was reputably the happiest part of his life and certainly -- at least in terms of purely instrumental music – the most productive. During this period, he penned the six suites for unaccompanied cello, the Sonatas and partitas for violin, the concertos for violin (all but three of which are lost), all six Brandenburgs and Book One of the Well Tempered Clavier -- all in all, a pretty fair accomplishment. All good things must come to an end and unfortunately, the good prince took himself a spouse who didn't share his affection for music and, moreover, resented her noble husband's consorting with one of his servants (by then, a close friendship had developed between Bach, who was already a musical celebrity, and the much younger prince). In fact, the good (?) woman was instrumental in hasten- ing Bach's departure to St. Thomas and it was in Leipzig where he stayed to his dying day.

Bach began his tenure as Cantor at St. Thomas in 1723. He was the third choice for the position, hired only after Georg Philipp Telemann (1622-1767) and Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) had declined the offer. His duties were primarily ecclesiastical and although he had, until then, composed relatively little church music, he was now required to produce cantatas every Sunday, and for major church holidays as well. By 1729, he had composed four complete cycles, each numbering about sixty cantatas, and he had composed two Passions in addition. But he felt disillusioned because there was little support or enthusiasm for his efforts.

In 1917, Bach moved to Cöthen where he served as Kapellmeister and Director of Chamber Music. The court of Cöthen, according to Bach's biographer Spitta, was "held on a modest scale" “It had never possessed a theatre and the Reformed (Calvinist) services did not encourage music." But Bach's employer, Leopold did. He was, in the composer's This lack of gratitude led to his seeking an additional words, "an amiable prince who knew and loved music." outlet and incentive for his creativity and he thus

became director of the Collegium Musicum, an organization of university students that had been established by Telemann in 1702. when he was studying law in Leipzig. Meeting at Zimmermann's coffee house and, --during the summer months, outdoors-- this amiable assemblage per formed a wide variety of secular vocal and instrumental music.

With so much music to compose, it is little wonder that Bach was not above occasionally recycling an earlier work or two for reuse. For his Cantata No. 156, for instance, he devised its Sinfonia by transposing the slow movement of his Cöthen period Harpsichord Concerto in F Minor, BWV 1056 downward from A flat Major to F Major. Or, more correctly, this lovely movement for oboe solo is a borrowed item from a lost concerto for either violin or oboe (of which the Harpsichord version is a subsequent arrangement).

Similarly, the Concerto for Oboe and Violin, BWV 1060 is a bit of speculative guesswork: a reconstruction of a Cöthen period concerto, either for two violins or (more probably) for oboe and violin, that was among the aforementioned lost works from that epoch. Again, the concerto's musical material survives by way of the composer's later arrangement for two harpsichords. To my ears, it sounds far more agreeable in its presumed original instrumentation, and the aural superiority is particularly striking when one compares the central Adagio -- angular and earth-bound in its dual-keyboard form, but flowing "on wings of song" when intoned by oboe and violin. In its three movement, fast-slow-fast format, and its subtle alternation of solo instruments alongside (but sometimes in juxtaposition with) the tutti strings and continuo, BWV 1060--in whichever form--is recognizably "to the Italian taste."

So, too, is the Fifth - and arguably grandest of the immortal Brandenburg Concertos. Dating from circa 1719 (it is all but impossible to ascertain definite vintage dates for most Bach's output), the concerto was probably composed to inaugurate the new harpsichord that Bach had brought back from Berlin.

Probably the last of the six, the Fifth Brandenburg, like its brethren, shows how Bach had assimilated all the stylistic prerequisites of Italian style but, with his genius for innovation, far transcended the "role model" in terms of structural dimensions and spiritual profundity. On a purely subjective plane, confluence of the solo concerto and the concerto grosso– with its gigantic written-out first movement cadenza -- the work is unmistakably a harpsichord concerto, and one that paved the way to, if not Liszt and Rachmaninoff, certainly to Beethoven. Conversely, and heartstoppingly so in its central unaccompanied Affetuoso, the spirit is of intimate chamber music a memorable three-way conversation between the harpsichord (now subdued where it was, just a movement earlier, explosively public), violin and flute. Incidentally, this is the first time Bach wrote specifically for the flauto traverso, or transverse flute, rather than (as in the Fourth Brandenburg) for a pair of recorders. In the final Allegro, Bach repeatedly uses a sprinting figure indicated in conventional baroque notation wherein the upbeat is written as a sixteenth note rather than as the third of a triplet (which is almost certainly the way it was intended to sound), Bach’s four orchestral suites (sometimes called Ouvertures) are in the French rather than the Italian style. Two of them (No. 1 in C, BWV 1066, and No. 4 in D. BWV 1069) were composed at Cöthen, the others (No. 3 in D, BWV 1068 and the present No. 3 in B Minor, BWV 1067) at Leipzig. The B minor Suite,

despite its misleading designation as "No. 2." was the last, with a vintage date from the late 1730s. Unlike the clarion trumpet and tympani-laden D major works and the relatively more subdued but still strongly oboepermeated C major, the B minor Suite projects a grave persona, sternly-but-tenderly set forth by a solo flute against a backdrop of strings and continuo. Its eponymous Ouverture fulfills its role as a throat Clearing call to order without violating the work's essential intimacy. It some what reminds this listener of the opening Sinfonia of the C minor Partita for keyboard, BWV 826 (but unlike that work returns to the slower-moving opening material). A series of contrasted dances follows: first a Rondeau, then a Sarabande, a pair of Bourrées, a Polonaise and its double variant, a Menuet and, finally, a Badinerie -Bach's only known use of this bantering plaisanterie ("Badinerie" or "Badinage" can be translated to mean jest, trifle or piece of fun).

Aulos' first recording for the Musical Heritage Society "Original Telemann" (MHS/MusicMasters) was released in 1981 in connection with the composer's tercentenary and was universally hailed as one of the most accomplished and significant observances of the Telemann year, receiving the "Critic's Choice" award of High Fidelity Magazine. Since then, the Ensemble has released over a dozen CDs on the same label, including 2-CD sets of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, as well as the complete "Essercizii Musici" of Telemann (5 CDs). Its latest releases include "A Barogque Christmas" with the soprano Julianne Baird, and a first-ever recording of a Suite from Rameau's opera, "Les Indes Galantes" in its version for chamber ensemble. In recent seasons Aulos has enlarged its Core group of five members to become a small chamber orchestra, performing and recording the larger-scale concerti, suites and sinfonias of Bach and Vivaldi.

-Harris Goldsmith

At home in New York City, Aulos presented for eight seasons its own concert series which featured some of the fore-most artists in the field in collaboration with the Ensemble. Harpsichordists Trevor Pinnock and Albert Fuller, violinists Jaap Schroeder and Stanley Ritchie, cellist Anner Bylsma, oboist Michel Piguet, and vocalists Jan De Gaetani, Bethany Beardslee, and Julianne Baird are among the artists who have appeared. For the past ten seasons, the Ensemble has presented a series of Christmas Concerts in front of the Neapolitan Christmas Tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, events described by the New York Times as "one of the most charming celebrations of the season in New York."

The Aulos Ensemble was formed in 1973 by five Juilliard graduates and has become in its twenty-year history one of America's most highly regarded and best known "original instrument ensembles. Through its extensive tours, recordings, and radio broadcasts, the Ensemble has achieved worldwide critical acclaim while presenting its own concert series at home in New York City, featuring international guest artists preeminent in the field of historically informed performance. Its unique blend of flute and recorder, oboe, violin, cello, and harpsichord has been termed "scintillating," "virtuosic," and "authentic baroque performance at its best" by some of this country's most respected music critics.

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