NEW-UP. J.S. Bach - Violin Concertos: Rachel Podger, Brecon Baroque. SACD-ISO + CD

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Classical | Label: Channel Classics | Catalog Number: CCS SA 30910 | RAR 3% Rec.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Back to Bach!, October 17, 2010

By	Andres Sender (N. CA, USA)

This review is from: Bach: Violin Concertos (Audio CD)

For those who already appreciate Rachel Podger's unique brand of magic I'll just say that this return to recorded Bach is lovely and all that one could hope for. All that one looks for is here, and there is more.
For those who are not familiar with Rachel Podger, she is a unique voice among violinists. She has absorbed the principles of late Baroque performance practice and made them a part of herself, so that the articulation and inflection of that rhetorical approach to music flows from her as a natural idiom of expression. But this is only half of the picture. She also excels at communicating the logic and coherence of the music. She's not so busy being expressive that she forgets where she is. She can turn a melodic corner with an elastic flourish that makes one catch one's breath, but she never goes off the road or gets lost. Her style is an intensifying balance between opposing forces: florid yet subtle, expressive yet ordered, emotional yet objective.
On this recording there is something of an added richness in her expression, and if anything an even stronger sense of relating each moment to the whole, creating an enlarged sense of integrity and structure in the music even while she executes ravishing rhetorical details with an agile liquid flow. Then again perhaps it is just that the intersection of Ms. Podger and Bach always magifies her virtues, and the present CD is merely the first opportunity we have had to clearly hear her rendition of a Bach concerto. These recordings have some of the energy and wit of a live performance--there is a strong feeling that the performers know each other well and are having fun...
Without at all downplaying the quality of the other movements, it is in the slow movements that one can really savor Ms. Podger's virtues. The heart-searching sincerity, emotional immediacy, and lack of bombast of these moments are very affecting. The ensemble can also really be savored in the slow movements, at times reaching a level of lush perfected harmony and rapturous emotion which is beautifully satisfying and nicely captured by the recording. 

01. Concerto In A Minor, BWV 1041, 1. Allegro 03:51
02. Concerto In A Minor, BWV 1041, 2. Andante 05:16
03. Concerto In A Minor, BWV 1041, 3. Allegro Assai 03:20
04. Concerto In E Major, BWV 1042, 1. Allegro 07:32
05. Concerto In E Major, BWV 1042, 2. Adagio 05:42
06. Concerto In E Major, BWV 1042, 3. Allegro Assai 02:37
07. Concerto In G Minor After BWV 1056, 1. Allegro 03:30
08. Concerto In G Minor After BWV 1056, 2. Largo 02:53
09. Concerto In G Minor After BWV 1056, 3. Presto 03:15
10. Concerto In A Major After BWV 1055, 1. Allegro 04:16
11. Concerto In A Major After BWV 1055, 2. Largetto 05:17
12. Concerto In A Major After BWV 1055, 3. Allegro Ma Non Tanto 04:05

Personal note from Rachel Podger

The opportunity to spend three intensive days recording four Bach concertos is an uplifting experience. Each piece encompasses a unique expressive world where discovering the real essence of every movement becomes a kind of obsession! The concertos in A minor and E major are old friends. I’ve grown up with them and I played them a lot when young. The other two, in G minor and A major, were very familiar (as harpsichord concertos or in various transcriptions) – relations I knew reasonably well but not such close friends. It has been a delight to explore these pieces and renew acquaintance, first hand... channelclassics

Performers: 

Rachel Podger - violin

Brecon Baroque:

Bojan Čičić - violin

Johannes Pramsohler - violin

Jane Rogers - viola

Alison McGillivray - cello

Jan Spencer - violone

Christopher Bucknall - harpsichord



This is the second time that Rachel Podger has recorded two of Bach’s most popular works, the Violin Concertos in A minor BWV 1041 and E minor BWV1042. The earlier version on the Harmonia Mundi label with the Academy of Ancient Music, that I have not heard, was criticised by contributors to this site for its disappointing sound quality. There are certainly no such criticisms likely to be made about Podger’s latest recording, thanks to the outstandingly realistic sound achieved by Jared Sacks in the clean acoustic of St John the Evangelist Church, Upper Norwood London.
In addition to the familiar concertos listed above we are also given two works more often performed as harpsichord concertos but here transcribed to produce two ‘new’ violin concertos.
BWV 1056 may well have once existed as a violin concerto, and its slow movement is to be found in the Sinfonia to Bach’s Cantata BWV156 ‘Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe’. The provenance of BWV1056 is rather more vague, and it has been suggested that it was once a concerto written for oboe d’amore. Be that as it may, both these delightful transcriptions are to be welcomed, particularly when given such joyful and spirited performances as here by Rachel Podger.
On this new recording she is joined by members of her own stellar period instrumental group, the Brecon Baroque that she founded in 2007. It comprises some of the most distinguished players in the world of period performances at the present time. It is important to point out that these are one-to a-part performances and though some may miss the greater sense of scale found in versions using a larger body of strings, the gain in clarity of each of the instrumental parts and the perception of the musicians’ cohesion more than compensates for mere numbers of players. 
Podger’s playing in all four works on this disc is quite lovely with brisk but never hectic tempi in the outer movements and a wonderful sense of repose and faultless legato in the slow movements. (Just try the slow movement of BWV 1056 track 8 to experience this). 
This SACD definitely deserves a top recommendation for both sound and performance.

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