Concerto Köln is one of the leading ensembles for period performance practice. Acknowledged and acclaimed for their rediscovery of musical rarities, Concerto Köln nevertheless see the Baroque as shaped by its prime movers Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Time and again, their engagement with this musical era leads them to astonishing musical realizations of these two composers.
This CD couples parts of three masterpieces for the first time: Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto” No. 5 and No. 1 of his Orchestral Suites together with Suite Nr. 1 from Handel’s “Water Music”. Right from the start, Concerto Köln make their approach to the music audible in the tuning of their instruments: their Brandenburg Concerto uses the lower tuning (392Hz) of Bach’s time. Involvement with “early music” is never an end in itself, then, but a way to achieve a deeper understanding of the music by performers and listeners alike.
Lorenzo Alpert, Artistic Director of Concerto Köln, explains this symbiosis: “Our intensive engagement over the last 30 years with composers, music theorists and contemporaries from the time of Bach and Handel, all of whom have contributed to the vitality of Baroque musical life, opens up new vistas for us as we approach the works of these two great masters. And yet the knowledge we have gained would be of no avail if we failed to make it audible by showing how we are moved by the magic of discovery and the passion for research. What a joy to recreate a sound that seemed lost for ever!”
“We find that our intensive engagement over the last 30 years with composers, music theorists and contemporary figures from the time of Bach and Handel, who have all made a vital contribution to the surging musical life of the Baroque, has opened up new aspects of works by the two great masters. The knowledge we have acquired would have been of no benefit to us, however, had we not decided – moved by the magic moment of discovery and driven on by the love of research – to make that knowledge audible. What a joy to recreate a sound that one had believed lost for ever!” LORENZO ALPERT, CONCERTO KÖLN
