Better As Concertos Than As A Gate

A disk from the pioneering days of using period instruments in the performance of early music, with the first three of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos played by the English Concert directed from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock. The performances wear their twenty plus years well and are still competitive in this repertoire. The concertos were written at a period in Bach's career when he was able to spread his wings a little and write music other than the liturgical or the "learned" and they are some of his most light hearted works but as always with Bach, of the highest quality. They were dedicated to the Margrave Christian ludwig of Brandenburg, hence the title subsequently given to them. The first and second concertos here are written in the concerto grosso style originating in Italy and the third shows the influence of Vivaldi. It would be preferable to have a disk of all six concertos since they form a logical cycle of differently scored explorations of the diverse tonal effects that could be produced by an orchestra of those times. This truncated disk was one of my first classical purchases however and has proved a most satisfactory introduction to all that bach has to offer. Maybe I'll trade it in for a full cycle in due course.