The Brandenburg Concerts will be three hundred years old this year, more precisely: the manuscript that was presented to Christian Ludwig von Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721 in the now rebuilt Berlin Palace. Because what Johann Sebastian Bach put together as “Six Concerts avec Plusieurs Instruments” for six concerts with various instruments, he had partly composed or designed much earlier, in Weimar or as Hofkapellmeister in Köthen, where he had some of the best musicians of his time available . It should not be interpreted as a sign of laziness or a lack of devotion, but rather as an expression of Bach’s lifelong conviction that good can always be made better.
For the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the anniversary is definitely a good occasion to dedicate a separate evening to the Brandenburg Concerts at the Salzburg Festival in the spirit of historical performance practice. The performance framework is anything but historical, as is the title of the work, which only emerged in the course of canonization in the late 19th century. After all, nobody at the margrave’s court would have thought of playing all six concerts in a row. Especially not in front of an audience that, in the cramped rows of chairs in the Mozarteum, surrenders to the music in silence and staring ahead. Nevertheless, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra succeeds in breaking up the inherently canonical of the bourgeois concert hall order, if only because they do not play the concerts in numerical order, but rather organize them into a coherent dramaturgy, in which the alterations for the changing line-ups invite you to take a deep breath (if you don’t feels limited by the FFP2 mask, which, in contrast to other places, remains mandatory in the concert halls at the Salzburg Festival).
The coordination between soloists and other musicians does not always succeed without friction
The musicians play standing up and without a conductor, even without looking at a leading concertmaster, who in historical performance practice often more or less secretly replaces the conductor. Gottfried von der Goltz, one of the two artistic directors of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, is the musical director of the evening, but primarily plays the violino piccolo, the slightly higher-pitched violin, in the first and the violin solo in the first, as a sensitive soloist who thinks in large arcs fourth concert. In between, he withdraws into the ensemble or is sometimes not involved at all, while others emerge as soloists. Corina Golomoz plays the viola solo in the sixth Brandenburg with delightfully free breath, Joseph Domènech phrased expressively on the oboe and Isabel Lehmann and Marie Deller contribute the lively chatter of their recorders. Only for the harpsichord solo in the fifth concert comes Kristian Bezuidenhout’s second artistic director, who is already known as a renowned soloist on fortepiano and harpsichord.
After all, the fifth Brandenburg is the first “piano concerto” in music history, in which Bach himself once shone as a virtuoso in Berlin. The fact that it does not turn out to be the expected highlight of the evening is not due to Bezuidenhout, but to the harpsichord. After using the continuo in the previous four concerts, the height is slightly out of tune, which is why Bezuidenhout resolutely reaches for the tuning key after the first movement and retunes. Above all, however, the chosen instrument has too little metallic penetration and sounds too monotonous to really stand out as a soloist.
One might even find that consistent within a music-making that arises entirely from the spirit of the group. The lack of a central management is definitely noticeable. The coordination between the soloists and the other musicians does not always succeed without friction losses, in the first part of the evening the intonation sometimes touches the border of the questionable. But that is a fair price for a free, independent music-making by individuals, but above all for the common love of play that jumps over to the audience here. In order to bring everyone together again at the end, the Freiburg team will not play any other work by Bach for the encore, but will end with a group concert by Georg Philipp Telemann.