GCD 921204

New release information

Johann Sebastian Bach
September 2008 Flute Concertos

NOTES (ENG) NOTES (FRA)

After his two recent incursions into the musical
world of the young Vivaldi, that excellent violinist
from Italy Enrico Gatti, together with his Ensemble
Aurora, has a further pleasant surprise for us: on
this occasion it is a hitherto unpublished work by
Johann Sebastian Bach. Using as a basis a series
of arguments of an unquestionable solidity – set
out in a fascinating booklet article accompanying
our disc – the musicologist Francesco Zimei has
reconstructed the until now lost Flute Concerto in
B minor. The inclusion of this work in the Neue
Bach Ausgabe is currently being arranged. Zimei’s
meticulous and detailed study has as its starting
point Bach’s habit of reusing instrumental works
for new vocal compositions. In this way, Zimei
Johann Sebastian Bach identifies as sources for the “new” concerto the
aria Zieht euren Fuß nur nicht zurücke (BWV
Flute Concertos
207/3), the introductory sinfonia from the cantata
Non sa che sia dolore (BWV 209) and an aria
Marcello Gatti, traverso included in the celebratory cantata Durchlauchtster
Leopold (BVW 173a). Once the magnificent results
Ensemble Aurora have been heard few doubts can remain that we
Enrico Gatti, violin have here a new treasure by the Kantor of the
Rossella Croce, violin Thomasschule. The brothers Gatti – Marcello is
Joanna Huszcza, viola the flautist on this disc – complete their Bach
Judith-Maria Olofsson, cello recital with the earlier version of the Fifth
Riccardo Coelati, violone Brandenburg Concerto (the “Triple Concerto” in D
Michele Barchi, harpsichord major, BWV 1050a) and with the famous Ouverture
Enrico Gatti, maestro di concerto in B minor (BWV 1067), works closely related both
in contents and their galant-style intentions with
the new discovery which has motivated this
recording. This new discovery will undoubtedly
Programme
provide much scope for discussion and will serve
as encouragement for the inclusion of a new work
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) in the repertory for many ensembles.
Après leurs deux récentes incursions dans l’univers
du jeune Vivaldi (l’une d’elles, un livre-disque avec
cinq généreux essais, Venise, Vivaldi et les sonates
op. 1), l’exquis violoniste italien Enrico Gatti et son
Ensemble Aurora nous surprennent une fois encore,
cette fois avec un inédit de Johann Sebastian Bach.
Se basant sur une série d’arguments d’une
incontestable solidité (qu’il expose dans un essai
fascinant inclus dans le livret), le musicologue
Francesco Zimei a reconstruit une œuvre perdue,
le Concerto pour flûte en si mineur, dont l’inclusion
dans la Neue Bach Ausgabe est en train de se faire
actuellement. Ce travail minutieux se base sur
l’habitude qu’avait Bach de réutiliser des œuvres
instrumentales pour ses compositions vocales, et
c’est ainsi que Zimei a identifié les sources du
« nouveau » concerto dans l’aria Zieht euren Fuß
nur nicht zurücke (BWV 207/3), la sinfonia du
début de la cantate Non sa che sia dolore (BWV
209), et une aria appartenant à la cantate de
célébration Durchlauchtster Leopold (BWV 173a).
Ce résultat splendide semble prouver que nous
avons là un nouveau joyau du Thomaskantor. Les
frères Gatti – Marcello est le flûtiste de ce disque
– complètent ce récital bachien en jouant la
première version du Cinquième Concerto
Brandebourgeois (le Triple Concerto en ré majeur,
BWV 1050a) et la célèbre Ouverture en si mineur
(BWV 1067), deux œuvres apparentées – en
contenu et « intentions » galantes – avec la
découverte qui motive un enregistrement qui fera
certainement parler de lui dans son sillage.

1-3 Flute Concerto in B minor

reconstruction by Francesco Zimei
[Allegro] – [Andante] – [Allegro]
4-6 Triple Concerto in D major (BWV 1050a)
early version of the 5th Brandenburg Concerto
Allegro – Adagio – Allegro
7-13 Ouverture in B minor (BWV 1067)
Ouverture – Rondeau – Sarabande –
Bourrée I/II – Polonaise/Double – Menuet –
Badinerie
Production details
Total playing time: 56'03
Recorded at Chiesa di San Carlo, Modena (Italy),
in November 2007
Engineered by Roberto Meo
Produced by Sigrid Lee
Executive producer: Carlos Céster
Design: Valentín Iglesias
Booklet essay: Francesco Zimei
English Français Italiano Deutsch Español
8 424562 21204 6
NOTIZEN (DEU)
Mit ihren letzten beiden Aufnahmen eroberten der
ausgezeichnete italienische Geiger Enrico Gatti und
sein Ensemble Aurora das Universum des jungen
Vivaldi. Nun überraschen sie uns abermals, und
zwar diesmal mit einem »neuen« Werk von Johann
Sebastian Bach. Auf der Grundlage einer Reihe
von Argumenten, deren Zuverlässigkeit nicht
anzuzweifeln ist und die in einem faszinierenden
Aufsatz im Booklet aufgeführt werden, hat der
Musikwissenschaftler Francesco Zimei mit dem
Flötenkonzert h-Moll eine verloren gegangene
Komposition rekonstruiert. Es wird gerade daran
gearbeitet, dieses Werk in die Neue Bachausgabe
aufzunehmen. Diese sorgfältige Rekonstruktion
beruht auf der Angewohnheit Bachs, seine
Vokalwerke für instrumentale Kompositionen wieder
zu verwenden, und so konnte Zimei die Quellen
dieses neuen Konzertes in folgenden Werken
identifizieren: Zieht euren Fuß nur nicht zurücke
(BWV 207/3), die Eröffnungs-Sinfonia der Kantate
Non sa che sia dolore (BWV 209) sowie eine Arie
aus der Festkantate Durchlauchtster Leopold (BWV
173a). Das großartige Ergebnis beweist, dass diese
Komposition zweifellos ein neuentdecktes Juwel
des Thomaskantors ist. Die Brüder Gatti – Marcello
ist der Flötist auf dieser CD – vervollständigen ihre
Aufnahme mit Werken Bachs mit einer Frühfassung
des Fünften Brandenburgischen Konzerts (dem
Tripelkonzert D-Dur, BWV 1050a) und mit der
berühmten Ouvertüre h-Moll BWV 1067. Diese
beiden Werke stehen inhaltlich und durch ihren
galanten Stil in engem Zusammenhang mit der
Neuentdeckung, die zu dieser Aufnahme führte –
und die sicherlich bei den Liebhabern und den
Interpreten Alter Musik für großes Aufsehen sorgen
wird.
NOTAS (ESP)
Tras sus dos recientes incursiones en el mundo del
joven Vivaldi (una de ellas en forma de libro-disco
con cinco extensos ensayos, Venecia, Vivaldi y las
sonatas op. 1), el exquisito violinista italiano Enrico
Gatti y su Ensemble Aurora nos vuelven a
sorprender, en esta ocasión con un inédito de
Johann Sebastian Bach. Basado en una serie de
argumentos de una solidez irrebatible –y que
expone en un fascinante ensayo incluido en el
libreto del nuevo disco–, el musicólogo Francesco
Zimei ha reconstruido el hasta ahora perdido
Concierto para flauta en si menor, cuya inclusión
en la Neue Bach Ausgabe se está gestionando en
estos momentos. Su minucioso trabajo parte de
la costumbre de Bach de reutilizar obras
instrumentales para sus composiciones vocales, y
así, Zimei identifica como fuentes del nuevo
concierto al aria Zieht euren Fuß nur nicht zurücke
(BWV 207/3), a la sinfonía introductoria de la
cantata Non sa che sia dolore (BWV 209), y a un
aria incluida en la cantata de felicitación
Durchlauchtster Leopold (BWV 173a). Una vez
escuchado el espléndido resultado, pocas dudas
pueden quedar de que nos hallamos ante una
nueva joya del Thomaskantor. Los hermanos Gatti
–es Marcello el flautista en este disco– completan
su recital bachiano con la primera versión del
Quinto Concierto de Brandemburgo (el Triple
Concierto en re mayor, BWV 1050a) y con la célebre
Obertura en si menor (BWV 1067), obras
emparentadas en contenidos e intenciones galantes
con el descubrimiento que motiva esta grabación,
que a buen seguro dará mucho que hablar y servirá
de estímulo para la inclusión de una nueva obra
en el repertorio de muchos conjuntos.

www.glossamusic.com
 [FROM THE BOOKLET]

Finally, Mr. [Bach] is the most eminent of the Musikanten in [Leipzig]. […] This great man would be
the admiration of whole nations if he had more amenity, if he did not take away the natural element in
his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style, and if he did not darken their beauty by an
excess of art. Since he judges according to his own fingers, his pieces are extremely difficult to play;
for he demands that singers and instrumentalists should be able to do with their throats and instruments
whatever he can play on the clavier.

This well-known paragraph by Johann Adolph Scheibe, part of an article which

appeared in the magazine Der critische Musicus on May 14, 1737, and which has passed
down to history as a trenchant and tendentious anti-Bachian libel, actually contains a very
precise indication about one of the special applications of the parodying methods employed
by Bach: the transformation of instrumental works into vocal ones. This type of composition,
which shows a certain fondness for using formulas – already well-proven – of the galant
style, is explicable not only by reasons of circumstantial needs (as has often been defended)
but by aesthetic reasons also. Bach made frequent use of such formulas during his initial years
in Leipzig, when he was the Kantor of the Thomasschule; needing to concentrate his activities
almost exclusively on the production of cantatas, he often resorted to the ‘disguising’ of
movements extracted from his own concertos and overtures, providing them with texts
created for that purpose.
There were two principal ways in which this was achieved: superimposing
independent vocal parts over the original passage, or conversely, by integrating the singers
into the instrumental forces by means of transcribing the appropriate solo parts – with the
consequence, identified by Scheibe, of frequently creating difficult concertante parts for the
soloists and choir. In any case, such solutions would always be underpinned by the demands
of eloquence and allowed the transfer to the new destination of the earlier ‘linguistic’
meanings, preserving intact the thematic effectiveness. Sometimes the transfer from one genre
to another consisted in a simple superimposition whilst at other times it involved a substantial
equivalence between voice and instrument, but both were capable of revealing the original
musical ideas of a work. In such cases, one can then attempt to isolate those ‘layers’ in order
to experiment – with all due caution – the ‘reversibility’ of orchestral scores composed by
Bach which come down to us only in their vocal attire.
This is the situation with the aria scored for tenor and strings, “Zieht euren Fuß nur
nicht zurükke”, BWV 207/3, part of the “dramma per musica” Vereinigte Zwietracht der
wechselnden Saiten, which by itself could be defined as a collection of Galanterien, given the
number of immediately recognizable musical ideas contained within it, notably from the First
“Brandenburg” Concerto. Various reasons lead one to identify in this aria the final movement
of a lost concerto: the piece, of a lively pace and in the key of B minor, is in fact characterized
by markedly soloistic writing, where the rigorous organization of the dualism between soli
and tutti is confirmed by a structure based not on the ‘da capo’ type, but on the Vivaldian
‘concerto-allegro’ type, which Bach knew well from his Weimar years. In general, this model
consists in the regular alternation of orchestral and soloist episodes with modulations to the
dominant in the first solo and return to the tonic in the penultimate tutti. In considering such
formulas of quality, as well as the decidedly concertante character of the solo part and the
extreme transparency of the orchestral material, it can be reasonably sustained that, except for
the necessary transposition downwards to the lower octave, the vocal adaptation to which the
passage seems to have been submitted does not otherwise involve substantial modifications,
being limited to the reorganization of groups of notes in line with the syllabification of the
text. As far as the original instrumental destination is concerned, it is worth pointing out that
the type of figurations employed, based on rapid successions of semiquavers articulated in
spans appropriate for breathing, seems to have been conceived in order to stir up the virtuosic
use of a wind instrument, whilst the dynamics of the string accompaniment, generally smooth
in the solo episodes – where the dialogue is reduced often to just the first violin – appear to
indicate the presence of an ‘interlocutor’ of the mellow and restrained sonority of the traverso
flute.
In terms of supporting this hypothesis it is worth considering the introductory
sinfonia to the cantata No sa che sia dolore, BWV 209, composed by Bach to an anonymous
Italian text, a text which was obtained by bringing together (not always in the most pertinent
way), fragments drawn from works by Guarini and Metastasio, the idea being to offer a
homage to a friend (whose name we remain unaware of) on the point of his departing from
Leipzig. Identified some time ago as being the first movement of a lost concerto in B minor
for traverso flute, strings and basso continuo, this piece coincides with BWV 207/3 on a
number of points: as well as the shared key and similar instrumental forces required, it
demonstrates a surprising stylistic uniformity, confirmed by significant aspects such as a
certain complementariness of the thematic material and a shared range of specific ideas.
Making a comparison of the two movements brings to the fore the idea that they belong to a
unitary musical design, which for this occasion has been restored on the basis of the
considerations referred to above.
In this way we hope not only to be able to add a new piece in the mosaic of the
knowledge about a repertory – such as of that of the concertos of Bach – as distant as we are
from its original point of creation, but also to be able to contribute in clarifying precisely
certain disputed stylistic stages or phases, by providing new details to the chronology. Given
that the cantata BWV 207 was performed on December 11, 1726, and that Bach does not
appear to have taken up once more a regular interest in instrumental music until April 1729 –
in other words, after having taken over the direction of the Collegium Musicium – it is in fact
quite probable that the concerto may well date back to the years of Cöthen, a fruitful period
for him, which included, among others, works for the solo traverso flute such as the Partita in
A minor, BVW 1013, four of the sonatas numbered between BWV 1030 and 1035 and the
Fifth “Brandenburg” Concerto.
This last work, characterized by remarkable similarities regarding metres and keys,
has supplied useful parameters for a systematic investigation into the vocal repertory of the
period, the objective being to identify a plausible central movement so as to be able to
complete the Flute Concerto, and thereby have no need for a generic linking cadence. The
comparison between the two works, and, in general, the analysis of the complete repertory of
the Bach concertos, and of the inherent agogic (where an accent extends the time value of a
note) and expressive characteristics required by the typology of the passage, indicate that the
second movement needed to have been written in the key of D major, to possess a duple
metre like the external movements of the concerto and to begin in a different way to the
opening Allegro, which starts on the tonic. To this it is necessary to add other specific
coordinates: the instrumental forces, the concertante writing, and by no means least –
coherently with the proposed dating – assigning it to the period of Cöthen. These premises
allow us to identify one single piece compatible in a satisfactory manner with the indicated
parameters: this is the soprano aria, “Güldner Sonnen frohe Stunden”, the second number
from the celebratory cantata, Durchlauschter Leopold, BWV173a, composed specifically on
the occasion of a birthday of the prince of Anhalt-Cöthen. As can be verified by listening to
the disc, the work possesses all the characteristics of a central movement from a concerto; it
involves, after a ritornello of eight bars, a free dialogue between the soloist and the strings
driven forward by means of elegant triplets in an affettuoso style, for which it has been justly
compared to that of the Fifth “Brandenburg” Concerto.
It seems natural, to give to this composition the place that it has been allocated within
the programme for this disc. We have chosen for this occasion the original version which has
been transmitted by a set of parts dating to 1720, or around one year before Bach was to
compile the famous collection of Concerts avec plusieurs instruments dedicated to the
Margrave Christian Ludwig von Brandenburg-Schwedt. However, Pieter Dirksen has put
forward the very reasonable argument that Bach might have already been begun to compose
this work in Dresden in 1717, at the time of the famous musical ‘duel’ with Louis Marchand –
won, as it is known, by Bach following the ‘clandestine’ withdrawal of his competitor.
According to this argument, Bach could have performed the concerto in the company of two
eminent soloists from the chapel of the Saxon court, the Konzertmeister Jean-Baptiste
Volumier (named, in fact, Woulmyer) and the flautist Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin; this trio of
remarkable virtuosos would have certainly been capable of expressing all the extraordinary
nuances within this score.
The most significant characteristic of this Triple Concerto in D major, BWV 1050a
resides in its writing, which is perhaps not the most elaborated, but nonetheless allows for the
revealing – in an ideal stylistic flashback way – of the logic of a ‘work in progress’, brilliantly
summarized, more than two centuries ago, by Johann Nicolaus Forkel when he acutely
observed that Bach, “like all true geniuses never objected to using the polishing and refining
possibilities of self-criticism in order to improve and perfect still further his compositions”.
The most obvious differences in particular concern the short and abrupt harpsichord cadence
at the end of the first movement – deprived of the broad thematic digression, traced on the
preceding solo episodes and whose effort is orientated towards obtaining markedly ‘Baroque’
effects in its initial impetuosity – as well as the immediate break-up of the key scheme and the
rapid and insidious chromaticisms (all these expedients most probably derived from an actual
improvisation). A further difference comes with the reduced dimensions of the final gigue,
undoubtedly remote from the monumental character of the Brandenburg version, a distance
accentuated by the absence of certain useful details for specifying the structural connotations
(here we think of, for example, the urgent harpsichord chord which introduces the da capo).
Finally, the reduction of the bass line – at least as far as the set of instrumental parts that have
been preserved – to the violone or double bass, that is to say without the presence in the
ripieno of the cello (that instrument so useful to provide counterbalancing), for the dynamic
plan and for the soloists forming that sophisticated trio. But being aware that at that time, the
directions regarding the instrumental forces would only typically refer to the obbligato
instruments, the absence of the cello cannot have, from the point of view of the performance,
an absolute value. Therefore, for the present recording, it has been decided, without
hesitation, to reintegrate the cello.
In the search for an ideal complement for this Flute Concerto, and always for reasons
of context, we have decided to complete the programme of this disc with the celebrated
Ouverture in B minor, BWV1067. The similarities in keys and instruments of the two works,
applied to differing stylistic worlds, allows one to put into practice here that stimulating
dichotomy formed by the Concerto “nach italienischen Gusto” and the Ouverture “nach
französischer Art” – a formula assigned, moreover, to characterize, in the manner of a
programmatic manifesto, the second part of the Clavierübung – above which Bach based one
of his most remarkable ‘ideological’ paradigms. The date of composition of this Ouverture,
magnificent in its rarefied dimension as chamber music, is even now debated: if some studies
may still be inclining towards assigning it to the years of Cöthen, the greater part of the
members of the Bachforschung decisively place this work towards the middle period of
Leipzig; its composition would then coincide with the activity of the previously-mentioned
Collegium Musicum – a variable size of ensemble (whilst being capable of reaching
considerable dimensions), which used to play on a weekly basis at the Café Zimmermann,
that up-to-the-minute meeting place for the elite bourgeoisie of the town. And it was precisely
that need to determine the taste of the citizens of Leipzig, who were very sensitive to fashions
coming from France, that would have obliged Bach to develop an increased output, evidently,
following the Weimar years – as which demonstrate, once again, the materials of some of his
cantatas from that period (it is enough to think of Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61).
Faithful to the parameters of the galant style – here particularly ennobled by the use of the
key of B minor, which plunges the slow movements into a lofty climate of reflective
melancholy – the composer expertly plays on a solo layout rich in effective contrasts. In the
episodes with a serious character, from the solemn opening Lentement to the ambiguous
meditation of the Sarabande, there prevails a tendency towards homophony (with the first
violin doubling the traverso flute), which favours fusions of mellow tonal colours. In the
quick movements – for example in the impulsive Bourrée or the joyful and sparkling
Badinerie – the concertante writing deploys, on the other hand, an agile and brilliant
virtuosity, whose results, obtained frequently by use of the variation technique, in reality
surmount the outlines of the dance, looking consciously towards the dimension of a pure form
of receptiveness.

Francesco Zimei