Tír Na HiFi

I have had cd sets of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos for several years now and I rarely listen to them, a few years ago I acquired a couple of sets that are forever gathering dust:

Bath Festival Orchestra with Yehudi Menuhin
Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Neville Marriner

More recently I splashed out on a set by Jordi Savall who, it seems, is held in very high regard, unfortunately these performance don't do much for me either:
Les six Concerts Brandebourgeois with Jordi Savall

and finally, in December, I got a set by La Petite Bande now this is much closer to what I am looking for:
La Petite Bande with Sigiswald Kuijken


I am looking for performances that explode with joyous rhythm; they are performances with a wide range of tone colour. Just before Christmas Fergus and I -- in our respective homes -- listened to the Freiburger Barockorchester play the First Concerto, it was a magical performance and it has me wanting more. Unfortunately, I can only find Brandenburg DVD recordings by the Freiburgers, there are none on CD.

So after all that, what set(s) would you recommend I get? What performances can you not live without?

Café Zimmermann!



This 6 CD set also includes the four Orchestral Suites and most of the other concertos. I got the individual volumes as they came out, but you can now buy the set for about the price of 2-3 of the original CDs. Forces are as small as possible, the performers young, the performances lively and full of dance.

Absolutely delightful!

Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Filled with life.

Seán wrote:So after all that, what set(s) would you recommend I get? What performances can you not live without?

tremendous sets, imho...

Looking around it seems my suggestion might be oop. It would be a shame if so.

^^ this is one of those threads where, if you ask 5 people, you're likely to get 10 different answers.. I'm quite sure that Fergus is perusing his vast Bach library as I type, blowing the dust off many a long since oop version... ;-)

After some consideration, these three sets make the cut for me. Having said that, I have never heard a recording of these masterly pieces that I didn't enjoy

Diapason wrote:Looking around it seems my suggestion might be oop. It would be a shame if so.

Well I had intended on getting the Zimmerman box set so I am delighted that Ciaran recommends these recordings, it strenghens my resolve gained from listening to their performances on amazon.fr.

There are so many different ways of performing these works and I want to get a few of them so I'll see how I go.

Keep the recommendations coming please.

One mention of Bach and they come flooding in, that's good.

bombasticDarren wrote: Having said that, I have never heard a recording of these masterly pieces that I didn't enjoy

Darren, if you're ever in Dublin you will be made feel most welcome if you decide to pay me a visit and I'll introduce to some tiresome performances before we move on to better things of course..

Diapason wrote:Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Filled with life.

A fine set and, pleasingly, not out of print. It's now on the Warner Apex stable and available on Amazon :-)