Classical Sunday 1: JS Bach: The Brandenburg Concertos

JS Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are amongst the gems of the entire classical repertoire, not only the Baroque period. Composed throughout his career then selected, assembled and reorganised, Bach presented these works to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721. Bach may not have heard these pieces performed as a complete work; the Margrave certainly didn't. He didn't have enough musicians in his Berlin orchestra to have them performed and so the manuscripts went straight into his library and were only discovered over a hundred years later, in 1849! How fortunate for us that they were! The manuscripts were first published the following year, in 1850, and have since then become regularly performed, frequently recorded, and very popular works.

The youtube performance given here is of the 5th concerto, performed by one of the best period performance ensembles, the Freiburger Barockorchester, and filmed at Cothen, where Bach worked as a court musician.

This is the concerto that includes an amazing section written to spotlight the harpsichord. I hope you enjoy it.



c Kenneth Rowley 2015

Love in Berlin, 1977

Berlin 1977

We've got nothing to lose and nothing to gain/ we can be lovers and kiss in the rain/ we can be lovers just for one day/ we can be heroes; what do you say?

Recently I've been listening again to David Bowie's "Heroes" album and it's taken me back... Bowie recorded it in West Berlin when he was living near the wall with Iggy. During 1976-8 I was in and out of West Berlin because I had a berliner girlfriend who lived there, at Neu Spandau, out by the edge of the city. I also knew a few pretty women who stayed at Wedding and a guy whose father was a lawyer and I spent time with my friends and caroused and danced and talked and made love and walked the city and enjoyed its odd decadence and lasting vibrancy. "Heroes" came out at that time, and I bought the German version, 'Helden', for my girlfriend and played it repeatedly late one night while the rain poured heavily outside her flat. It was a good time, a time of another world, of a world long passed but not gone. This week I've been surprising myself with whispered glimpses of that silent age.