Bach Brandenburgs!

Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre

One of the most recognized and popular works in baroque music

J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos encapsulate all the qualities that affirm his brilliance as a composer. Creativity, originality, and boldness are on display in these groundbreaking concertos whose novel combinations of solo instruments create a kaleidoscope of textures.

Tafelmusik’s JUNO Award-winning 1995 recording of the Brandenburgs was described by NPR as “lucid and refreshingly pure, like water drawn from a cool, clear stream.”

More than 30 years later, Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger and Tafelmusik invite audiences to revisit four of these seminal works—concertos 1, 2, 3 & 4—with newfound curiosity. Known as a musician who plays Bach “with an explorative sense of excited discovery” (BBC Music Magazine), Podger takes centre stage in the Fourth Concerto, with its extremely virtuosic demands of the violin soloist.

Completing the program is Bach’s remarkable organ Prelude and Fugue in E-Flat, “St. Anne,” in a newly commissioned arrangement for orchestra.

Credits & Program

Box Office

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Running Time

120 minutes

Style of Music

Baroque orchestral

Guest artists

Rachel Podger

Principal guest director & violin soloist

“Rachel Podger, the unsurpassed British glory of the baroque violin,” (The Times) has established herself as a leading interpreter of baroque and classical music. Fresh from being announced as the winner of two 2023 BBC Music Magazine Awards for Instrumental Recording and Recording of the Year, as 23/24 Artist in Focus for Kings Place, and with two new albums released this month, Principal Guest Director Rachel Podger was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Prize in October 2015, Gramophone Artist of the Year 2018, and the Ambassador for REMA’s Early Music Day 2020. A creative programmer, she is the founder and Artistic Director of Brecon Baroque Festival and her ensemble Brecon Baroque.

Following an exciting and innovative collaboration, A Guardian Angel, with the vocal ensemble VOCES8, Rachel was thrilled to be one of the Artists in Residence at the renowned Wigmore Hall in 2019/2020. Alongside this, Rachel and Christopher Glynn released the world premiere of three previously unfinished Mozart sonatas as completed by Timothy Jones (2021). Their second disc together of three Beethoven Sonatas was released in March 2022. Recent recordings include a disc of solo repertoire along with a recording of C.P.E. Bach sonatas with fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout.

Performers

Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
Directed by Rachel Podger

Program

J.S. Bach
Brandenburg Concertos no. 1, 2, 3 & 4
Prelude and Fugue in E-flat, BWV 552, arr. for orchestra