FYI: This piece is the first thing recorded on the "Golden Record" attached to the Voyager space probes. So with any luck, and perhaps thousands or even millions of years after humanity is gone, the work of Earth's greatest musical genius will still be out there somewhere.
Reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live skit, where a NASA scientist appears on a talk show and announces that they been contacted by aliens in response to the Voyager recording. The message: "Send more Chuck Berry."
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This is really the genious of Bach isn't it, simple motifs and melodies turn into such beautiful harmony. Its like painting a most detailed pattern and also shining a light on it. I cant even describing it but it is like in northern baroque painting, people focused on the detail and pattern of the figures, clothing, enviroment and symbolism. Whereas in baroque paintings of Italy they focused in motion and anathomy of figures and so on. But Bach is like the greatest combination of the both.
To think long after our civilization is gone and the Earth is turned to dust or engulfed by the sun, this music will be streaming for millions and billions of light years into the universe as mankind's greatest achievement in tonality.
Indeed it is! It's on the right hand set of scores, second from the bottom. Set of B notes Set of A notes Set of C notes, then Set of H notes (Germans use H for B-flat)
No one is talking about how the solo violin at 2:00 has this gorgeous sequence that starts with a seemingly deceptive syncopated upbeat (as four sixteenth notes) that transitions beautifully into that circle of fifths progression. Looks like Bach took some inspiration from Vivaldi there
This recording is a little better than most about letting the ripieno be heard. I know the concertino is supposed to be dominant, but Bach wrote so much wonderful counterpoint in the ripieno that is consistently not heard in most performances because the ripieno are instructed to play so softly. If I wasn't looking directly in the score, I wouldn't hear a note the violas were playing, and there's some nice syncopation among the upper strings that gets lost. I had a recording of the Brandenburgs long ago where the ripieno were allowed to play out at full volume, and it was the most wonderful, rich audio experience I ever had with these pieces. I wish I could find that again. Most of the performances you can find are so thin and anemic with the ripieno barely playing.
Has to be my favourite Brandenburg! Absolutely timeless. This WILL be being played in 1,000 years time, I truly do believe that, as people who know the beauty and excitement in this music just want to share that feeling!
Oh man I hope u recover soon. Actually I've been learning the Alto Recorder ever since the lockdowns in the US started back in March 2020! Best of luck to your study of the instrument as well!
@@rhymeswithyetiv2331 thank you! I haven't been practicing as much due to work picking up, including music gigs. It's still tough for me to do this piece at fill speed but I know I can get there🙂
@@giocosovelasco That's so sweet of you to ask! I am doing very well now in many ways. My COVID case was mild. I've been dealing in many rare recorders and other instruments these days🙂
Esta música está gravada em um disco de ouro a bordo na nave Viking que foi lançada ao espaço na década de 80. A nave ja ultrapassou recentemente os limites de nosso sistema solar. No disco estão gravados outras músicas e outros sons.
He should be really proud of this recording. Absolutely perfect, really does justice to this great masterpiece. And thank you so much Gerubach, for your fantastic scrolling videos.
It tells us at the end it is the English Consort under Trevor Pinnock. They do a splendid job with a fairly slow, steady tempo for the first movement but kept buoyant and dancing appropriately. The score is really useful and helps even those who don't read music to appreciate how much is going on!
Beautiful indeed. Especially at 11:17 & 12:15 where the upbeats of the solo violin are doubling the the orchestra's 1st violins highest note and filtering out the soloists downbeats. Just remarkable. BWV 1048 on the way.
The octave jump echos at 3:38 between the 2nd Violin/Viola & the Lower strings is pretty cool. But just remember... I'm no Bach scholar or expert. I'm just the messenger.
i remember being filled with so much disdain having to hear this for music analysis every day for like a whole semester in high school. 3 years later and it still induces so much stress 🥴
I see you studied in the IB programme the same time as me. Thank you for this comment. I was trying to remember what the other piece was. I always preferred this to the other. Easier to analyze.
@@MichealHolt i always felt like kodály was easier to analyze just because his piece was easier to listen to. our entire class was way more into the dances of galánta, so the analysis was10 times smoother than brandburg's simply bc we actually wanted to hear it.
Fun fact. The piccolo trumpet was included in Penny Lane by the Beatles because they heard David Mason playing it in this piece and asked what the “unusually high trumpet” was
One of oyr favourite classically made music works from thr renown composer Bach. Trivia. Did you know this classical piece is on the Voyager spacecraft sent from earth as a greeting to whom ever finds it in the far most reaches of space.
Qué buena versión! ësta es la velocidad correcta de estos allegros, no a 180 km/ h, por algo Bach puso bien clarito: Allegro Moderato, que en ese siglo sería aún más moderato que en la actualidad.
I recognize this concerto from The Great Courses, it's used in the course on Bach and the High Baroque, the one on Beethoven's symphonies, and several others as a lecture intro.
I agree. At this tempo one can actually hear the counterpoint!! So many performers these days seem to think they're in a contest to show how nimble their fingers are, thus killing the music (especially in the case of Brandenburg 2) with such a frantic tempo that it turns into a light bouncy triviality. (Could it be that 'experts' with doctorates in Musicology influence performers to take those idiotically fast tempi? Whatever it is -- desire to show off nimble fingers or/and fear of displeasing the antiquarians with tempi that are "too slow according to recent scholarship" -- it's a kind of plague of musical stupidity.) Thank God for recordings like this one!
I'm with you, too. Before finding this version, I listened to many others on RU-vid and it felt like the players were in a race to finish the piece as quickly as possible! This is my favourite Brandenburg concerto, so I'm picky about its presentation. Bach's music brings so much joy to my life and I was thrilled to see that this is the version I have on CD. Thanks so much for posting, gerubach. ❤
I didn't expect to see this one posted so soon either! The fewer red lines, the faster it gets done I suppose. I also agree on the overload of counterpoint. There is so much going on in this piece that one's eyes are going everywhere. At least Bach gives us a break in the 2nd movement and at 10:39 right?
Yeah, Bach is really good at making multiple lines going on at once so it's hard to keep track of everything going on. Yet somehow, it still all fits together...
I just follow one or two lines I find interest in at different points. The bass is most important to me. I sometimes hum it as well. Good brain exercise. The mind tends to want to sing the topmost melody.
Yep. Once I get familiar with the overall piece, I try to focus on what's not obvious, one by one following a fabric of melodic threads that support the main theme. That's where the composer's genius, if there is any, gets truly revealed.
In the second movement, there are lots of cases of two quarter-rests next to each other in a measure. Is there a reason why they use two quarter-rests instead of a half-rest?
For all those for whom 6 Brandenburg Concertos are not enough, the Bach connoisseur Rudolf Lutz has written another concerto in the same style: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-luszuppcgZQ.html
