Bach 24bit

Imagining how Bach himself might have transformed the Goldbergs Variations for a chamber group, Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque present a pioneering new arrangement of the Goldberg Variations by Chad Kelly. Employing a variety of instrumental combinations from a typical Bach ensemble of single strings, oboe, flute, bassoon and harpsichord, these newly-crafted Goldbergs illuminate exquisite responses to the various historical genres inherent in Bach’s scores. This beloved masterpiece was composed through a period of personal tumult for Bach; two unsuccessful job applications, the premature death of his son Gottfried, and criticism of his music in a prominent Hamburg publication. Bach’s outpouring of beauty in the Goldberg Variations has long captured audience’s imaginations - Chad Kelly, Rachel Podger and her fleet Brecon Baroque preserve the work’s exquisite intricacy whilst adding breadth, texture and colour to its emotional backdrop. This revisioning of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a perfect transformation of the work for the modern era.

All the music on this release is associated with the festival of Christmas. Bach wrote the cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (BWV 110) for morning service on Christmas Day 1725, and the first version of the Magnificat in E flat major (BWV 243a) for Vespers on Christmas Day 1723, seven months after the Leipzig town council appointed him cantor of the Thomaskirche. It would hardly be exaggerating to say that Bach thus presented his visiting card to his new employer. According to the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, the work is his "first really large-scale and complex piece of church music".

Neben der für zwei Oboen, Fagott, Streicher und Bc arrangierten Ouvertüre im französischen Stil BWV 831 (im Bach'schen Original für Cembalo) erklingen hier zwei vom Cembalisten und Dirigenten Rinaldo Alessandrini zusammengestellte Suiten nach Klavierwerken Johann Sebastian Bachs. Dargeboten wird das alles sehr lebendig und einfühlsam von den Musikern des Concerto Italiano. Und auch hier gilt: Ob Originalwerke, Transkriptionen oder Bearbeitungen, ob aus der Zeit des Kantors oder später, ob von Bach oder anderen: Es spielt keine Rolle. Alle Wege führen zu Bach, zu seiner Essenz.

Over the course of more than half a century, Wolfgang Rübsam has consistently brought new insights to bear on the keyboard music of Bach, firstly in sets of the canonic organ music for Philips, then the same for Naxos. In the last few years, his musicianship and understanding of Bach enriched by those decades of experience, he has turned to the harpsichord/piano repertoire for Brilliant Classics. A series of critically acclaimed albums has shed new light on The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas and Toccatas with Rübsam’s performance of them on a lautenwerk – a ‘lute-harpsichord’ with a distinctive chime and colour which Bach himself would have been familiar with.

Good things always come in threes. There was once the Concerto in Italian style, BWV 971, reconfigured according to the by then modern disposition advocated in Italy at the beginning of the 18th century (anthology "Concerti italiani", 2004, OP30301). More recently, the Goldberg Variations, reimagined for a small string ensemble, crowned a fabulous apotheosis in the land of the variation ("Variations on Variations", OP30575). Here are now three completely original orchestral suites by Bach, a new fool's game organised by a tongue in the cheek Rinaldo Alessandrini, once again surrounded by his dear friends from the Concerto Italiano.

Good things always come in threes. There was once the Concerto in Italian style, BWV 971, reconfigured according to the by then modern disposition advocated in Italy at the beginning of the 18th century (anthology "Concerti italiani", 2004, OP30301). More recently, the Goldberg Variations, reimagined for a small string ensemble, crowned a fabulous apotheosis in the land of the variation ("Variations on Variations", OP30575). Here are now three completely original orchestral suites by Bach, a new fool's game organised by a tongue in the cheek Rinaldo Alessandrini, once again surrounded by his dear friends from the Concerto Italiano.

According to the obituary written by his son Carl Philip Emmanuel and his former pupil Johann Friedrich Agricola, Johann Sebastian Bach composed five Passions, including “one for two choirs” (the St Matthew Passion).

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the keyboard concerto—a lifelong relationship, challenging and exhaust¬ing, altogether fruitful, brilliant, and even spectacular into the bargain.

The r-release of a superb recording of Bach's (1685-1750) iconic St Matthew Passion with leading soloists and instrumentalists from the English early music scene of the 1990s: Paul Goodwin leads an ensemble of specialist instrumentalists, including Rachel Podger (1st violin) and Ashley Solomon (flute), plus vocal soloists Nancy Argenta,