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GRAMOPHONE ( 04 / 2018)
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Hänssler
HC17046



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Reviewer: Charlotte Gardner 

Frank Peter Zimmerman has slipped in a couple of less predictable offerings for this Bach violin concertos programme, because while he opens with the famous A minor, BWV1041, and E major, BWV 1042, neither of the D minor concertos occupying the disc’s second half is the famous ‘Double’. Instead he’s given us a pair which survive in manuscript as harpsichord concertos from Bach’s Leipzig years but which probably began life as melody-instrument concertos written during the Cöthen years, when he wrote the other two. So, first and most interestingly of all, we have BWV1052, a work now almost indelibly established as a harpsichord concerto and barely recorded as anything other. Then we have BWV1060, which does enjoy a small parallel life as a double melody-instrument concerto but largely for violin and oboe rather than for the equally possible two violins that Zimmermann serves us here.

Tools-wise we’re slightly outside of the norm too, because Zimmermann’s Strad is on a modern rather than a period set-up, and likewise the Berliner Barock Solisten – members of the Berlin Philharmonic – albeit with period-appropriate bows. It may come as a small surprise, then, that the overall sound of these bright, lively performances is one of absolutely precise, polished perfection. Intonation, articulation, attack, rhythm, metre, you name it, it’s all immaculately neat and silky, whether you’re concentrating on the sprightly detached ensemble-playing or on Zimmermann himself (and his son Serge for the BWV1060 double) with his elegant little tucked ornamentations.

In fact the whole feels almost a bit too perfect at times, especially if you compare all this cool elegance to the gutsy oomph and greater metric freedom heard on Andrew Manze and Rachel Podger’s 1997 recording with the AAM, their BWV1060 in particular suggesting an existential struggle against Bach’s D minor darkness. Likewise, while there’s not much violinshaped competition on the BWV1052 front, my money’s still on Amandine Beyer’s 2005 reading with Gli Incogniti.

If you like your Bach couched in smoothly precise perfection then this is for you. If you prefer something with a bit more of a freewheeling kick about it – and indeed period instruments – I’d stick with Manze and Podger.

 

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