Bach J.S.: Concerto Reconstructions

Like many musicians of his era, practical demands and obligations were placed on J.S. Bach on a daily basis, and on a number of occasions this resulted in the German composer reworking existing compositions for use in new contexts. However, although listeners may have encountered pairs of ‘double’ works that use the same musical material (often an instrumental version and a vocal version), there are a number of cases where it seems reasonable to assume that one version of the work has not survived. For this new recording, Giorgio Sasso and Salvatore Carchiolo have taken this premise as their starting point. Based on the hypothesis that many of Bach’s extant harpsichord concertos are transcriptions of earlier violin concertos (which have been lost), they have ‘reconstructed’ four concertos, using an array of different sources and approaches. The artists’ superlative understanding of Bach’s instrumental music is apparent in the sensitive decisions that they have made. Following a practice of Bach’s own, Sasso and Carchiolo drew on musical material from his cantatas in the two Concertos in D minor. Likewise, the Concerto in G features solo instruments from different instrumental families, an unusual practice but one validated by their sources. For each concerto, Sasso and Carchiolo have made individual choices in the face of numerous interpretative possibilities; the end result is a unique, exciting recording, which reveals fully the artists’ thorough research, careful study of the original scores, and sound knowledge of Bach’s compositional procedures.