J.s. Bach Violin Concertos

This collection was first compiled in 1970 or so from recordings dating as far back as 1961. The set, now remastered and issued on cd, includes performances by three generations of harpsichordists, with Gustav Leonhardt providing the central focus. Leonhardt includes (in BWV 1060, 1062 and 1065) his former teacher from the Schola Cantorum in Basle, Eduard Mueller (the student modestly playing second harpsichord to his mentor in 1060 and 1065) while his own first-generation students Anneke Uittenbosch and Alan Curtis join him for BWV 1061, 1063-1065.

For Roy Goodman's various roles in the project assume Toad-like proportions. Founder of the Brandenburg Consort, Goodman is not at all content merely to direct these performances but also plays solo violin, violino piccolo and viola as well as penning lively accompanying notes. Well, readers may rest assured that I'm no Badger and am inclined to applaud Goodman's diversity of talent rather than otherwise.

After two recent incursions into the musical world of young Vivaldi, the excellent Italian violinist Enrico Gatti, together with his Ensemble Aurora, present, amazingly, a hitherto unpublished work by Johann Sebastian Bach. Using a series of arguments, set out in the cd booklet, the musicologist Francesco Zimei has reconstructed the 'lost' Flute Concerto in B minor.The inclusion of this work in the Neue Bach Ausgabe is currently being arranged. Zimei's meticulous and detailed study has as its starting point Bach's habit of reusing instrumental works for new vocal compositions.

A new recording of Erik Bosgraaf, one of the most original, versatile and innovative recorder players of the moment, winner of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. The dynamic range and emotional impact of his playing is phenomenal.The instrument in his hands is like an extension of the human voice, speaking and articulating the musical language. Previous recordings of Bosgraaf include Vivaldi Concertos, Handel sonatas and the Renaissance collection Des Fluyten Lusthof (by Van Eyck).

Bach's music was central to the life and career of Yehudi Menuhin and the violonist is captured in his full early bloom in these performances from the 1930s. Joining the teenage Menuhin in the first and most celebrated of his four recordings of the concerto for Two Violins is his teacher and mentor, George Enescu.

When it rains, it pours. In our last issue, I raved about a new recording of this curious and rarely heard version of Beethoven's well-known violin concerto—please refer to that issue for details and for a recapitulation of the major recordings of the piece from the early days of the long-playing record. Now here it is again, in a much more fleet reading by the brilliant young Finnish pianist and composer (his own music may be sampled on Finlandia's Portrait of Olli Mustonen and a radiant-sounding, closely miked Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. The two new recordings complement each other nicely.

Listening to this irresistibly joyful and magnificently musical set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites, one is immediately struck by two thoughts. First, Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan have been wasting their time concentrating on Bach's dour cantatas, and second, Bach himself was wasting his time writing his melancholy church music when he could have been composing infinitely more cheerful secular music. While Suzuki and his crew have turned in superlatively performed, if spectacularly severe recording of the cantatas, they sound just as virtuosic and vastly more comfortable here.

Christian Hommel studied the oboe in Freiburg with Heinz Holliger and the piano with James Avery. He was a prizewinner at the Geneva International Music Competition and at the Trieste Oboe Competition and received various other awards and prizes, including the scholarship of the German Music Council in 1985, the 1987 German Music Competition prize and the 1988 prize of the Wiesbaden Mozart Society. He has appeared throughout Europe, America and Asia as a soloist, chamber musician and conductor. For some years he has served as a member of the Cologne Chamber Orchestras as a soloist and ensemble player and has a special interest in contemporary music. He gives regular international master-classes, is Professor at the Bremen Hochschule für Künste, directs the German Youth Symphony Orchestra and has won awards for his recordings.