There is no shortage of good Bach violin concerto recordings, nor even of those played by historical-performance groups, yet this one has several distinct attractions. First, is simply the presence of violinist Kati Debretzeni, long a violin section leader of Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists but rarely heard as a soloist in her own right. She's one of the few historical-performance specialists to have emerged from Eastern Europe, and she deserves wider exposure. Second, are her two arrangements of harpsichord concertos ...
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There is no shortage of good Bach violin concerto recordings, nor even of those played by historical-performance groups, yet this one has several distinct attractions. First, is simply the presence of violinist Kati Debretzeni, long a violin section leader of Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists but rarely heard as a soloist in her own right. She's one of the few historical-performance specialists to have emerged from Eastern Europe, and she deserves wider exposure. Second, are her two arrangements of harpsichord concertos (assisted in the case of the Violin Concerto in D minor, after the Harpsichord Concerto, BWV 1052, by Wilfried Fischer), competently done and really adding viable violin concertos to the Bach repertory. Third, the ensemble size of about a dozen is ideal. Lastly, is the overall shaping of the pieces, and here Gardiner deserves a good deal of credit: everyone would have been fine if he had stayed in his usual comfortable groove, but here he responds nicely to a younger player with...
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