JS Bach - Violin Concertos

Isabelle Faust (violin), Bernhard Forck (violin), Xenia Loeffler (oboe), Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin

Having already set down her accounts of the solo violin Sonatas and Partitas, as well as the accompanied Violin Sonatas with Krystian Bezuidenhout, Harmonia Mundi’s star violinist Isabelle Faust now turns her attention to the concertos. This is repertoire she recorded some years ago for Hänssler Classics with the more ‘mainstream’ accompaniment of Helmut Rilling and his Bach Collegium Stuttgart. This time, however, working with the superb period instrumentalists of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, it’s with bells on: not just the sheer quality of the playing, but the music itself. For, in addition to the usual fare of the two Violin Concertos in A minor and E major plus the D minor Concerto for two violins and the Concerto for oboe and violin, there’s a veritable plethora of reconstructed concertos, cantata sinfonias and trio sonatas, even an orchestral suite in an unusual guise, all featuring notable concertante parts for solo violin. Two discs’ worth of sparkling music, and generously priced to boot!

Proceedings kick off with the mighty D minor Concerto, BWV 1052, which survives as  a keyboard concerto and has long been a favourite with pianists and harpsichordists from Lipatti and Gould to Rousset and Staier. But, as Bach specialist Peter Wollny explains in his booklet notes, it has for some years been thought that the work originated in a lost violin concerto. Faust is far from being the first violinist to tackle this reconstruction (Szigeti and Ricci were among the earliest), but she is surely the most convincing, dashing off the virtuoso – and persuasively violinistic – figuration with tremendous flair and naturalness. Given the faultless intonation elsewhere on the album, the perceptible note of sourness introduced by soloist and orchestra in the slow movement seems a deliberate interpretative strategy, emphasising the mournful, lament-like Affekt of the music, and it certainly works a treat.

The other two concertos on CD1 are a beautifully poised account of the E major Violin Concerto – outer movements pert, central Adagio wonderfully dreamy – and the well-known C minor Concerto for oboe and violin, itself a reconstruction from a concerto for three harpsichords. Here Faust is partnered by oboist Xenia Löffler, and they make an excellent team, not least in the glorious interweaving lines of the Largo ovvero Adagio second movement, while they rise magnificently to the demands of the closing Allegro, which is taken here at quite a lick. Peppered in between these three concertos are two cantata sinfonias: the heart-stopping opening movement of Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21, and the dazzlingly expanded version of the first movement of Brandenburg Concerto no.3 (with added horns and oboes!) that opens Cantata BWV 174. For a complete change of scale there’s also some chamber music: the Organ Trio Sonata in C major, BWV 529, rescored for two violins (Faust and Bernhard Forck, the AAM Berlin’s concertmaster) and continuo, captivating in its intimacy.

On disc two, Löffler and Forck exchange roles, with Löffler now the trio sonata partner in a chamber transcription of the D minor Organ Trio, BWV 527 (with a slow movement that was later incorporated into the A minor ‘Triple’ Concerto for flute, violin and harpsichord), and Forck playing second fiddle to Faust in the much-loved Concerto for two violins in D minor, BWV 1043, including a beautifully inflected account of the central Largo. The disc opens with the famous Orchestral Suite no.2, BWV 1067, transposed down from its normal B minor to A minor and with solo violin replacing the familiar flute. As a reconstruction, it’s less plausible than the others included in this collection, for one misses the distinctive timbre that a wind instrument brings to the top line; but in the virtuoso passages (and above all in the concluding, racy Badinerie) Faust gives it her all, so that there’s always plenty to enjoy. More convincing as a piece of reconstruction is a G minor version of the F minor Keyboard Concerto, BWV 1056, a brooding work that gains much from Faust’s bright-toned playing and the ever-alert accompaniments of her colleagues. And it’s the sweetness of tone that Faust coaxes from her 1658 Jacobus Steiner instrument that is the chief glory of the A minor Violin Concerto, BWV 1041. Too often turned into a dramatic, hard-edged showpiece, this masterpiece is here treated to a gentler touch that enhances its expressiveness and forms one of the undoubted highlights of the album. As throughout, Faust’s ornamentation is tasteful and unintrusive, so that it well withstands the repeated listening her playing so readily invites.

Two more cantata sinfonias, the gentle opening movement from BWV 182 featuring recorder and violin, and the jaw-droppingly spectacular D major Sinfonia, BWV 1045, from an unknown lost work, scored for solo violin trumpets, oboes, timpani, strings and continuo, round off this splendid collection of ‘Violin Concertos Plus’. Recorded at Berlin’s Teldex Studio in a slightly boxy-sounding acoustic that favours the soloist(s) without undue prominence, and with unfailingly stylish playing from the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, this spellbinding album deserves to be on every Bach lover’s shelf. Enthusiastically recommended to all and sundry!