mcq wrote: Secondly, Florilegium's recent traversal of the Bach Brandenburgs. A great performance of these works will tell you as much about the ensemble as the music. These are perhaps the smoothest, most refined versions that I've heard on period instruments. I should stress, however, that this is not a criticism but simply an interpretive decision on the part of the ensemble director, Ashley Solomon, who has traded dramatic urgency and dynamic extremes for a technically assured reading that should be valued for its thoughtful, cerebral and measured approach to this great music. Tempos are swift, textures are light and transparent, timbral sonorities are beautifully realised and no detail in the original scores goes unremarked by these musicans and yet there is just such a sense of studied ease in these performances that seems a world away from the breathless urgency of such highly charged versions as those by Musica Antiqua Köln, Concerto Italiano and Il Giardino Armonico. As listeners, we can only benefit from such diversity of interpretation. Florilegium have taken their time to record these works, and the results are very rewarding. Hopefully they will record the Orchestral Suites in due course.
Definitely one to look out for as far as I am concerned.
