For more than 30 years, Concerto Köln has stood for high standard historically informed performance. The German ECHO Classic and Record Critics’ Award winning ensemble impresses with its lively precision and rousing enthusiasm and plays in the most established concert halls around the globe.
The Brandenburg Concertos are a pinnacle of baroque instrumental music. Like no other Bach has juggled with the compositional possibilities of the courtly instrument in his Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments and almost exhausted the genre encyclopedically. The collection, which was dedicated to Margrave Christian Ludwig von Brandenburg in 1721, served as a musical visiting card for the composer, which excellently outlines the genre “Concerto with several solo instruments”.
Concerto Köln not only lives up to the virtuoso playing demands on this recording, but rather makes the work shine in new splendor. For this, the ensemble re-measured renowned terrain and answered basic questions anew: how should the continuo group be occupied in the various concerts, which trumpet is played in the second Brandenburg, what about the “Fiauti d’Echo”, Bach demanded in the fourth concert? To answer the last question, a double flute was developed according to old drawings, which produces this wished echo effect. This makes Concerto Köln the first orchestra to use such echo sounding in the fourth concert.
