Cologne Chamber Orchestra

To start their series of the complete orchestral music of Bach, in this 250th anniversary year, Naxos kicks off with a superb set of concertos for oboe and oboe d'amore. These are lost scores but are believed to have been used by Bach for other instruments, including the well-known harpsichord concertos. Whatever their provenance, Christian Hommell and the Cologne Chamber Orchestra under Helmut Mueller-Bruehl play them with great style and virtuosity. A delightfully different disc that is most entertaining.

What you will hear is a performance and recording that is not unlike 'The Stokowski Sound.' Deep, rich and firm bass line, smooth strings and lushness around. The soloists are as romantic. The second movement of the double concerto is a love duet. It has a beauty that literally arrests you.

Bach’s concertos for multiple harpsichords and orchestra are beloved by some and drive others crazy. Perhaps no other music so graphically illustrates Beecham’s famous description of the sound of the solo instrument as “two skeletons copulating on a tin roof.” The performers must exercise great care in selecting instruments that are not too “clangy” sounding, and the recording has to balance a need for warmth and roundness of tone with contrapuntal clarity. In fact, most of this music was originally composed for melody instruments (violin and oboe, principally), and Naxos has obligingly reconstructed the original versions on another disc in this excellent series.

Bach’s D minor Concerto BWV 1052 is one of his very greatest works, whether heard in its arrangements for harpsichord solo, violin solo, or even organ solo (first movement) as the prelude to one of the church cantatas. The music has a brooding, almost tragic intensity, partly the result of the tensely stern melodic material, partly due to the fact that all three movements are set in minor keys. It’s also a very large work, at more than 20 minutes one of the largest of all Baroque concertos. Robert Hill gives a stunning performance of the work here, comparable to the great recording by his mentor and teacher, Gustav Leonhardt. Unlike many period instrument people, Hill’s refusal to rush the outer movements gives the music an extra measure of grim strength, and his deft passagework allows every Bachian note to register with unforced clarity.

One of the nicest things about Naxos’ complete survey of Bach’s orchestral music is that each disc always includes a substantial musical “bonus” that distinguishes it from the numerous competing performances available. In this case, conductor Helmut Müller-Brühl and his intrepid band of keyboard and string players offer a reconstruction of the Concerto for Three Harpsichords BWV 1064 in its original version for three violins. Comparison of the two versions is fascinating, not least because the players offer a fractionally more expansive tempo in the slow movement of the violin version, acknowledging the stringed instrument’s superior ability to sustain a long, lyrical melody.

The third volume of Mozart’s Masses focuses on works written in Salzburg when the composer was in his late teens and early twenties. The Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis , a bright celebratory work, is the only Mass setting without soloists that Mozart composed. The Missa Brevis in D major is a compact, economic setting conforming to the Archbishop’s dictates for shorter works. Its companion, the Missa Brevis in B flat major , though keenly responsive and beautiful, upset church musicians because it utilised a Parisian gavotte in the ‘Dona nobis pacem’ and ended Mozart’s employment on a provocative note.

The third volume of Mozart’s Masses focuses on works written in Salzburg when the composer was in his late teens and early twenties. The Missa in honorem Sanctissimae Trinitatis , a bright celebratory work, is the only Mass setting without soloists that Mozart composed. The Missa Brevis in D major is a compact, economic setting conforming to the Archbishop’s dictates for shorter works. Its companion, the Missa Brevis in B flat major , though keenly responsive and beautiful, upset church musicians because it utilised a Parisian gavotte in the ‘Dona nobis pacem’ and ended Mozart’s employment on a provocative note.