Perfect collaborations: Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos at the Anvil

It’s not every day one hears all six of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in one evening – not least from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. How to curate such a programme? Given no two concertos are the same with only one employing a trumpet, one lower strings and another featuring two horns, the order of performance raises a minor predicament. Rather than present a consecutive traversal, the OAE – in the Basingstoke leg of their UK tour – sought to maximise variety of colour, mood and sonority by shuffling the sequence of these Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments. Rewarding as this was, it may have challenged some listeners if they attempted to follow the printed programme where the works were listed in numerical order.

But it was a gratifying decision to bookend the journey with the richly scored first and second concertos, thus beginning and ending the evening with a certain carousing and festive brilliance. Horns held with bells up drew the eye and ear in No. 1, Martin Lawrence and Ursula Paludan Monberg gloriously nimble in the two Allegro movements. No less impressive were the sighing phrases of the Adagio, where oboe and violin piccolo beguiled in exquisitely poised lines, while the antiphonal final bars briefly brought rapt mystery.

The Concerto no. 2 in F major stands apart from the others for its notoriously high trumpet part and was dispatched here with aplomb by David Blackadder. Yet what fascinated most was the differentiation of timbres between the solo group, with recorder, oboe, trumpet and violin distinctly identifiable within the ever-changing textures. Equally involving was the expressive dialogue between violin, oboe and recorder in the central Andante – a movement of shared intimacies that highlighted the artistry of these musicians who knew instinctively when to come to the fore or merge with colleagues.

Elsewhere, the Affetuoso of the Fifth inhabited an otherworldly quality with Lisa Beznosiuk’s flute and the violin of Margaret Faultless fashioning shapely phrases underpinned by the elegance of Steven Devine’s harpsichord playing. His extended cadenza was the still centre of the evening. The outer movements compelled too, with concertino and ripieno players forming an absorbing partnership, and with much élan in the concluding Gigue. There was plenty of character too in the performance of the Third where divided strings brought out the ingenuity of Bach’s writing, illuminating the passing of melodic material from one group of players to another. If the central Adagio sounded like a lament, the finale was wonderfully alert, its edge-of-seat tempo recalling those legendary recordings by Musica Antiqua Köln under Reinhard Goebel during the 1980s.

The evening’s second half began with a memorable account of the Fourth Concerto, a performance vividly defined by the athletic recorder playing of Rachel Beckett and Catherine Latham and Huw Daniel’s violin. One could not have asked for a more perfect collaboration, its imitative motifs and ornate figuration lovingly observed in such a way as to obscure the sheer virtuosity on display. And what fun the players had with the Presto finale – surely one of Bach’s most exhilarating fugues. Tonal colouring deepened in the Sixth, its scoring for pairs of viole da braccio and viole da gamba, cello, violone and continuo bringing a singular mellow sonority. If the chugging rhythms felt undernourished in the outer movements there was much to admire in the expressive interplay communicated in the central panel. Overall, a sense of communication was uppermost in these performances, every member of the OAE clearly enjoying themselves.