J S Bach: The Six Brandenburg Concertos
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
The Anvil, Basingstoke. 12 November 2024

Performing all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in a single concert is a relatively rare occurrence, so this was a very welcome event in Basingstoke’s Anvil concert hall, a favourite venue for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, one of the Anvil’s Associate Orchestras. One of the problems of playing all six concertos is the logistics of gathering so many instrumentalists together, with several only needed for one piece. Another is the length, on this occasion lasting from 7.30 until nearly 10pm. Although the programme suggested the concertos would be played in their numbered order, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performed them in the sensible order of 1, 3, 5 + 4, 6, 2, as they did in their St John’s, Smith Square concert in 2017, reviewed here. This order provides some key contrast, and saves the most powerful concerto to the end, made more dramatic by following two more intimate concertos.

The Anvil’s classical music concerts usually include a free pre-concert talk in their small venue, The Forge. This was a particularly interesting one, with Sir Nicholas Kenyon discussing the many issues surrounding the Brandenburg Concertos with OAE’s harpsichord player Steven Devine and violinist Margaret Faultless. The issues are complex and way beyond this review but were well summarised by the (anonymous) programme note writer. A key part of the discussion was the wide range of instruments that Bach calls for and his idiomatic writing for each instrument. As an example of the preparation that OAE players put in before a concert, part of their preparation for this Brandenburg tour was an open rehearsal. This included Cecelia Bruggemeyer talking about the choice of bass instrument (violone or double bass) for the various concertos. A video of this can be viewed here.

Huw Daniel

With only one player per part and many soloists, each individual player’s role is important. Of the 21 players, the most needed for any concerto is 12, with two requiring just 7 players. Working with four different directors, leading from the violin or viola, the sense of a common endeavour was clear throughout, each player focussing on their companions without the distraction of a conductor. With so many soloists it is difficult to pick out just a few, but there are obvious individual contributions that deserve special mention, not least harpsichordist Steven Devine for his thoughtful and musical performance of the extraordinary extended cadenza in the first movement of the Fifth Concerto. I have often thought of this as a continuo player’s revenge – it starts as a concerto for flute and violin, the normally backseat harpsichord player burbling away with virtuoso figuration, almost unheard until the flute and violin are beaten into submission and the harpsichord player takes over for a 227-bar solo of increasing complexity and drama.

Steven Devine

The two horn players, Ursula Paludan Monberg and Marting Lawrence impressed in the first concerto with the horns held vertically above their heads in an arrangement that, if straightened out, would have resembled a pair of warlike Celtic Carnyxes. Although they weren’t quite as ‘disruptive’ as it was suggested they might be in the pre-concert talk, they certainly made their presence felt, both aurally and visually. Violinist Huw Daniel was a major contributor in Concerto One, playing the violin piccolo, and in Concerto Four, playing with the two flauti d’echos that Bach called for, here quite correctly interpreted as two treble recorders. I like the layout of the players for Concerto Three, with its three groups of three players arranged in an arch format rather than the more usual three-sides-of-a-square format which doesn’t reflect the interplay between the instruments that Bach intended. Violinist Margaret Faultless timed her concluding little solo plonk perfectly at the end of the bustling third movement of the third concerto.

An impressive evening given to a large and evidently impressed audience.

Photos by Oliver Wilson, from a Manchester performance earlier in the short tour