1 LP - BG 542 - (p) 1954 3 LP - BG 540/42 - (p) 1954 1 LP - AVRS 6043 - (c) 19?? 2 LP - AVRS 6042/43 - (c) 19?? 2 CD - ATM-CD-1244 - (p) 2003

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1-6 Concerto No. 1 in F major, BWV 1046 - (Allegro) 4' 23" A1 - Adagio 4' 33" A2 - Allegro 4' 54" A3 - Menuetto-Polonaise-Menuetto 7' 54" A4 Concerto No. 2 in F major, BWV 1047 - (Allegro) 5' 07" B1 - Andante 3' 51" B2 - Allegro assai 2' 43" B3 Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 - (Allegro) 7' 12" C1 - Adagio 1' 56" C2 - Allegro 6' 03" C3 Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049 - Allegro 7' 10" D1 - Andante 3' 52" D2 - Presto 5' 01" D3 Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050 - Allegro 10' 56" E1 - Affettuoso 4' 29" E2 - Allegro 5' 24" E3 Concerto No. 6 in B flat, BWV 1051 - Allegro 7' 26" F1 - Adagio ma non tanto 4' 24" F2 - Allegro 6' 10" F3   Chamber Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera / Felix Prohaska, conductor - Jan Tomasow, violin and violino piccolo* (1*,2,3,4,5) - Helmut Wobisch, trumpet (2) - Rudolf Streng, violin (3) - Karl Trotzmüller, recorder (4) - Alfred Jilka, violin (3) - Paul Angerer, recorder and viola* (4,6*) - Wilhelm Hübner, viola (3,6) - Karl Mayrhofer, oboe (1,2) - Eduard Rab, viola (3) - Hans Reznicek, flute (2,5) - Ernst Kriss, viola (3) - Nicolas Harnoncourt, viola da gamba (6) - Richard Harand, 'cello (3,6) - Beatrice Reichert, viola da gamba (6) - Günther Weis, 'cello (3) - Anton Heiller, cembalo (1,2,3,4,5,6) - Ludwig Beinl, 'cello (3)   Luogo e data di registrazione Brahmsaal, Vienna (Austria) - marzo 1954 Registrazione live / studio studio Producer / Engineer Seymour Solomon Prima Edizione CD Artemis Classics "The Bach Guild" - ATM-CD-1244 - (2 cd) - 48' 35" + 54' 52" - (p) 2003 - AAD - mono Prima Edizione LP - Vanguard "The Bach Guild" - BG 542 - (1 lp) - 38' 49" - (p) 1954 (BWV 1050 e 1051) - Vanguard "The Bach Guild" - BG 540/42 - (3 lp) - 33' 25" + 31' 14" + 38' 49" - (p) 1954 (BWV 1046-1051) - Amadeo - AVRS 6043 - (1 lp) - 54' 52" - (c) 19?? (BWV 1049, 1050, 1051) - Amadeo - AVRS 6042/43 - (2 lp) - 48' 35" + 54' 52" - (c) 19?? (BWV 1046-1051) Note Harnoncourt è presente solamente nel Concerto No. 6 BWV 1051. Notes on the program The Brandenburg concertos were composed while Bach was in the service of the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, an enlightened dilettante who (on Bach's word) not only enjoyed music but understood it. At Cöthen, the stress was upon secular instrumental music in which, very probably, the Prince himself partecipated. Undoubtedly, there was ample opportunity for Bach during his stay at Cöthen (1717-1723) to cultivate this field. A visit of the Margrave of Brandenburg to Cöthen, and some small encouragement which Bach constred the Margrave to have, tendered him, was apparently sufficient to motivate the dedication whic, dated 1721, reads in part as follows: "A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure, in obedience to Your Highness' commands, of appearing before Your Highness and experiencing Your condescending interest in the small musical talents which Heaven has disposed upon me; and since, upon taking leave, I understood Your Highness to honor me with a gracious expression of willingness to accept some pieces of my composition, I have taken the Liberty, in compliance with Your Highness' most gracious commands, of tendering as my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness, the present concertos which I have adapted to several instruments..." Routinely, the Margrave is complimented upon his "fine and delicate taste," implored not to judge the concertos by their imperfections, but to infer from them "the most profound respect and most humble obedience" they are intended to convey. In conclusion - and here we come undoubtedly to the point of this long winded flattery - Bach requests a continuation of "Your Highness' gracious favor," offering assurances of a heartfelt wish to be "employed on occasions more worthy of Your Royal Highness and of Your Highness' service..." The tone of the dedication is entirely proper and conventional for the period, and marks rather plainly the social status of a composer in relation to an aristocratic patron. Written not in Bach's native German, but in French, the officinal language in 18th century German courts, it tells us little of Bach as an individual, for it is obviously a routine social rather than a personal document. Schweitzer makes the rather large inference that Bach must have been adept at this involved, courtly French idiom. Spitta more reasonably takes it for granted that some courtier at Cöthen probably supplied Bach with a document conventional for such occasions. In any case, there is nothing to indicate that the Margrave remembered Bach, or found his work interesting. There is no evidence of an honorarium which custom allowed a composer to expect, and it is even possible that the works were not performed. When the Margrave's library was inventoried after his death, the Bach works were not even listed, but presumably included in two large lots (77 and 100 respectively) labeled "concertos by different masters and for various intruments," and put up for sale for what seems today a ridiculously low price. This set is typical of Bach's "collections." In essence, a principle of composition is selected - here a concerto polarity of instrumental forces - and then applied to cover a wide and freely selected variety of contingencies. In the main, a concerto grosso technique - a small solo unit (concertino) versus a larger orchestral grouping (grosso or ripieno) - is the dominating principle; although sometimes, as in the first concerto, this is so freely handled as to evaporate almost entirely. Usually, in place of a rogorous concerto grosso definition between concertino and grosso, the concertino unit breaks up into its component soloists, and at times a given solo instrument assumes a role so prominent as to cause the given movement to take on temporarily the complextion of a solo concerto. The traditional concertino unit of three strings (two violins and a 'cello) is modified both in number and type of instruments. There is little here of adherence to formula and much of a perpetually varied and imaginative exploration of the possibilities inherent in the concerto relationship between dissimilar and unbalanced bodies of sound. Each concerto in the set postulates a tonal imbalance peculiar to it. The drive toward unity and balance in the face of the obstacles Bach deliberately designs for himself - and it takes a Bach to design an obstacle difficult enough to challenge a Bach - sets up within the music an inner momentum, an intrinsic sense of sheer musical excitement, which the work of a formula ridden academic can never possess. The difficulty of reducing these concertos to type, is almost exactly proportional to the pleasure in sensing the workings of a bold and disciplined imagination, and in responding to that sense of victorious aesthetic accomplishment which each concerto so satisyingly provides. Notes (BG 540/42) by Abraham Veinus, Music Department, Syracuse University About the Performance and Recording Felix Prohaska moved from conductorship of the Duisberg and Strassburg Opera to become, in 1945, principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera. His name has often been compared by critics with that of Bruno Walter. To his mastery of the romantic idiom he adds a deep schooling in the Baroque tradition. Of his recording of J. S. Bach's Four Orchestral Suites (BG-530/1) the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "Musical scholarship and ingenuity have produced a splendidly authentic version of Bach's Four Suites"; Paul Affelder described it as "of prime artistic and musicological significance"; the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "an epochal release." His recordings of J. S. Bach's Cantatas Nos. 4 and 140 (BG-511) and of C. P. E. Bach's Magnificat in D (BG-516/7) were listed by B. H. Haggin as among the outstanding releases of the year. Jan Tomasow has been soloist with the major world orchestras and is presently Concertmaster of the Little Orchestra Society of New York. His versatility is indicated by his performance of the violino piccolo part in the First Brandenburg Concerto and of the fiendishly difficult modern writing for violin in Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat (VRS-452, with Les Noces). Amond his other celebrated Vanguard and Bach Guild recordings are Mozart's Divertimento in D. K. 334, with Prohaska (VRS-441), which the New York Herald Tribune called "a treat hard to match," Mozart's Divertimento in B flat K. 287 (VRS-444) and A Bouquet of Vivaldi Concertos (BG-538). Hans Reznickek and Helmut Wobisch are, respectively, first flute and first trumpet of The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Helmut Wobisch is widely regarded as the outstanding Bach trumpet player of Europe. Anton Heiller is professor of composition and organ in Vienna and acknowledged to be one of the leading organists in Europe. No effort has been spared to make this a definitive version of Bach's great and historic Brandenburg Concertos. Especially important is the employment of authentic Baroque instruments, such as the viola-da-gamba, and the recorder. Bach was a master of instrumentation, as of every other branch of composition, and looked on the Brandenburg Concertos, as, among other things, a treatise on the handling of instrumental timbres. In his concertos, as in his cantatas, he was explicit as to where he wanted the timbre of the cross-blown flute (flauto traverso) and where that of the recorder (Blöckflöte, flute-ä-bec, flauto dolce). The sweetness of the recorders is heard in the Fourth Concerto, that of the viola-da-gambas in the Sixth Concerto. The violino piccolo, as directed bz Bach, is emplozed in the First Concerto. In the Second Concerto, howewer, the flute is used instead of the recorder, the technical difficulties of which, in combination with the brilliant high trumpet part would have made the recording too hazardoust. In the Third Brandenburg Concerto, the corner movements are separated by a cadenza improvised on the cembalo by Anton Heiller, the Viennese master of cembalo and organ. This is done in accordance with the practice of Bach's time where improvisation played a much greater role than in performance today. This recording is guaranteed to be indical in sound to the original master tapes from which it was made. Every subtle nuance of the original performance has been captured to enhance your musical pleasure. Ampex model 300 magnetic tape recorders in conjunction with the Altec and the new miracle remote controlled Siemens-AKG C-12 condenser microphone were utilized to produce the original masters which embody a frequency response covering the entire range of human hearing and embrace the full gamut of orchestral and vocal sonorities. The recordings was made by Vanguard engineers on location in the Brahmssaal, Vienna, Austria - world renowned for its superb acoustical characteristics. Supervision was by Symour Solomon, Music Director of Vanguard Recording Society, Inc.. To realize the extraordinary dynamic range of this recording it is advised to play it at full room volume. Compensate for the RIAA curve in playback. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)