Pickett

There is no shortage of discs around featuring transcriptions of Renaissance music for brass. Whilst played on modern instruments the main difference here however is that London Brass, several of whom play period instruments in other ensembles, have enlisted the specialist knowledge of Philip Pickett to direct them.

Everything that could be desired in a historically informed performance of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos is presented in Philip Pickett's brilliant set with the New London Consort, released in 1993 on L'Oiseau Lyre. This version with period instruments and an ensemble of a size according to Baroque norms is much more than a dry run-through of these beloved works. It is a clever and highly expressive re-creation of Bach's most popular concertos, re-imagined through the artistic and philosophical connections and conventions that likely were found in them by Bach's contemporaries, most probably by Bach and the Margrave of Brandenburg himself.

The Carmina Burana is the most famous of all treasuries of medieval Latin and Middle High German poetry, named after the Bavarian monastery where it was compiled and preserved. It is best known today for Carl Orff's hour-long selection from it's rich collection of love lyrics, student songs and religious poetry written in Latin and old German. During the 1960s and 70s a few early-music ensembles made more or less successful efforts to capture the unique mix of secular and sacred idioms brought together by the original manuscripts.

It figured that some other prolific composer of Handel’s time would have composed a competing “Water Music,” but Telemann’s half-hour work–otherwise known as an Overture in C–remains relatively obscure. Written for the centenary of the Hamburg Admiralty a few years after Handel’s “Water Music,” it is an invigorating piece of work, consisting of an Overture and nine dance movements with various watery descriptions from mythology that the listener can take or leave.