Guest
Claudio Abbado and the Orchestra Mozart perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050, at the Teatro Municipale Valli in Reggio Emilia, Italy (2007). Bach’s fifth Brandenburg Concerto is special in two respects: It includes a ‘concertino’ with harpsichord, transverse flute and violin, in which the three solo instruments confront the string orchestra as if in a kind of dialogue. And the slow middle movement is played by the three soloists without any string orchestra at all. This second movement is a restrained lament in which violin, flute and harpsichord enter into a canonic dialogue with each other. What is also special about the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto is that Bach gave the harpsichord a prominent role. In the first movement, this tradition-steeped keyboard instrument has a three-minute solo passage that is brilliantly handled by Ottavio Dantone (05:56). Because of this harpsichord solo, the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 is considered perhaps the earliest exa
