Less is more, Bach must have thought when he turned to the popular genre of the orchestral suite with a French-style overture (consisting of two parts: a slow march and a quick fugue). There were already dozens, and later even hundreds, of dance suites designed in this way in the output of his compatriots. However, he succumbed to this fashion only four times.
Perhaps he felt that the record holders in the genre had already said everything there was to say, or perhaps his employers felt that way. After all, Bach – as one easily forgets when reading about divine intervention in his brilliant compositions – wrote exclusively for practical purposes, as part of his duties as an organist, cantor, kapellmeister or teacher. Moreover, we find nothing of the mysteries of theology or numerology in the suites; this is light music, dominated by French dances, which the German court adored.
However, it remains a mystery who heard the suites for the first time and where. Although they appear side by side in the main catalogue of Bach’s works (BWV), the composer neither numbered them nor wrote them around the same time. Stylistically, they fit both the period of his work at the ducal court in Köthen and his years in Leipzig, when they could have been heard at performances organised by Bach at Zimmermann’s famous café (today we would call it an art café). There is also no certainty as to the original performers of the works, but that affords more scope to adapt them for different forces, as evidenced by the ‘pop culture’ hit Air on a G String, which is in fact a nineteenth-century arrangement of the second part of the Suite in D major.
No less famous is the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 – with Italian influences, as it draws on the concerto grosso tradition. A type of concerto that pits the soloist (in this case three soloists) against the ensemble, in Bach’s hands it defies those rules and draws all the instruments into a multi-stranded narrative. If the dedicatee of the Brandenburg Concertos, Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, had known how valuable these works would prove to be, he would have immediately employed Johann Sebastian at his court. Meanwhile, legend has it that this was the most brilliant ‘job application’ ever rejected.
Piotr Mika (Ruch Muzyczny)
After the concert, we invite you to the Mirror Hall for a meeting with the artists!
Aapo Häkkinen will play a harpsichord - copy of the Colmar Ruckers instrument from the collection of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music.
