JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1-6 Freiburger Barockorchester

Six characters in search of a form
The Brandenburg Concertos need no introduction – doubtless because they owe their fame to a systematicexploration of a genre recently inherited from the Italians, with a still youthful Bach devising as many different scorings as there are concertos. When he received the manuscript of the six works, Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, must have been terrified by their demands, and his musicians even more so! Three centuries later, the cycle is as open as ever to new ‘historically informed’ interpretations, as this set demonstrates.