Bach - Brandenburg Concertos / Il Giardino armonico

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Il Giardino Armonico is an original instruments group made up of skilled young Italian specialists in Baroque music. They bring a light, airy touch to the Brandenburg Concertos, with deeply felt slow movements, sprightly Allegros, and blistering Prestos. Unlike some of their ilk, they play with vitality while avoiding interpretive extremes; the finale of No.3, for example, is taken at a blistering pace but never feels too fast for the music. Solos are highly accomplished, with scintillating violin and wind contributions, along with charmingly blatty period horns in No. 1. The engineering is a big plus, helping to make this one of the best period performances of these perennial favorites. --Dan Davis

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos / Il Giardino armonico, Music, Johann Sebastian Bach, Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino armonico, Stefano Barneschi, Paolo Beschi, Marco Bianchi, Marco Cera, Duilio Galfetti, Alberto Grazzi, Paolo Grazzi, Michele Barchi, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Concerto, Concerto Grosso

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos / Il Giardino armonico
Average customer rating:

Lush, melodic, beautiful

Hmm

I can hardly believe that many of us reviewers listened to the same recording

Not the Best Brandenberg

I love to hate them

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos / Il Giardino armonico
Johann Sebastian Bach , Giovanni Antonini , Il Giardino armonico , Stefano Barneschi , Paolo Beschi , Marco Bianchi , Marco Cera , Duilio Galfetti , Alberto Grazzi , Paolo Grazzi , and Michele Barchi
Manufacturer: Teldec
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

All Works by J.S. Bach | Bach, Johann Sebastian | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
Concerto Grossi | Concertos | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Concertos | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Baroque (c.1600-1750) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music
Il Giardino Armonico | ( I ) | Featured Performers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B000000SRC
Release Date: 1997-09-16

Tracks:

Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. I In F Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. I In F Major: Adagio
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. I In F Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. I In F Major: Menuetto
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. II In F Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. II In F Major: Andante
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. II In F Major: Allegro Assai
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. III In G Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. III In G Major: Adagio
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. III In G Major: Allegro

Tracks:

Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. IV In G Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. IV In G Major: Adante
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. IV In G Major: Presto
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. V In D Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. V In D Major: Affettuoso
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. V In D Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. VI In B Major: Allegro
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. VI In B Major: Adagio ma non tanto
Brandenburg Concertos: Concerto No. VI In B Major: Allegro

Amazon.com essential recording

Il Giardino Armonico is an original instruments group made up of skilled young Italian specialists in Baroque music. They bring a light, airy touch to the Brandenburg Concertos, with deeply felt slow movements, sprightly Allegros, and blistering Prestos. Unlike some of their ilk, they play with vitality while avoiding interpretive extremes; the finale of No.3, for example, is taken at a blistering pace but never feels too fast for the music. Solos are highly accomplished, with scintillating violin and wind contributions, along with charmingly blatty period horns in No. 1. The engineering is a big plus, helping to make this one of the best period performances of these perennial favorites. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

Lush, melodic, beautiful.......2006-09-10

This is a wonderful example of the Brandenburg Concertos played on period instruments. It is full of life, probably the best rendition I have heard of these concertos. The words "lush" and "melodic" do not do it justice. Giovanni is a master of the recorder - his technique is wonderful and sounds so effortless! My husband is hooked on this CD and he is not a big fan of classical music, and my boss, who likes the bigger sounds of Wagner and big symphonic bands loved this CD. I, myself, am a lover of the more intimate sound of chamber music, baroque and renaissance music. This is one of my all time favorite recordings. A must for your collection!!

Hmm.......2006-04-23

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.

I can hardly believe that many of us reviewers listened to the same recording.......2006-02-05

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.

Not the Best Brandenberg.......2005-03-07

Save your money. Il Giardino breaks no new ground here and instead gives a rushed performance more reminiscent of something from a provincial opera company than an accomplished ensemble. The Corn is blares unexpectedly while the dynamics are all over the place. The audio quality may be good, but the music sounds so bad; especially the harpsichord which has an unpleasantly metallic timbre.

If you want a great new recording, get either the Tafelmusik recording under the direction of Jeanne Lamon (which has the best Concerto No. 5 around), or Jordi Savall's recording directing Le Concert des Nations/La Capella Real de Catalunya. Both of those recordings far outshine this one and make it sound like the work of amateurs.

I love to hate them.......2003-02-19

I own many disk of IGA including this, I've heard them in concert and even assist to a rehearsal. I would like to say that the way they make music doesn't have anything to do with authenticity. The strings players have a mostly modern tecnique, (most of them use chinrest and endpins). I would like to point out that the art from 1700 is not ugly as a whole or in its parts (look at paintings or architecture). Yes they do make ugly sounds and they do have very poor taste.

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