"Originally founded by Karl Munchinger, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra has been around for well over a half century, made many recordings and toured the world extensively. This is a fine collection of six of the “hit” concertos of Bach, including three which are reconstructions based on his keyboard concertos for one, two and three harpsichords. The D Minor Concerto for 2 Violins is probably the most perfect work ever written for that instrumental combination, and it boasts a longish and very heartfelt center slow movement. The label’s plan to take multichannel reproduction of classical further than the typical players in front & ambience in back is realized even more extensively on this DVD. Not only is every single piece recorded with a slightly different assignment of individual instruments to individual channels, but in one case there are even changes during a piece! The first two concertos have the single solo violin in front with the orchestra proper laid out in a U pattern behind the listener. The balance of the various instruments in the orchestra is slightly changed between the two concertos. In the C Minor Concerto the violin solo is at left front, the oboe solo at right front, the rest of the violin section at the center speaker, the harpsichord behind and the bass group at the rear - centered between the viola and second violin. The most effective spatial layout of all is in the final concerto for 3 violins - a sort of Violin Summit. The three solo violins are assigned to the L, C and R frontal channels, with the orchestra itself again in a horseshoe pattern behind the listener. This is really effective and exciting when a theme is heard first from the right violin, then taken up by the center violin and finally joined by the left hand instrument. The change during a work happens in the second movement of the Concerto in E Major for one solo violin. In the first movement the orchestra sounds rather close and the violin soloist is more distant; the second movement moves the orchestra further away and brings the listener closer aurally to the solo violin to better hear the subtleties of this intimate movement. All these works - whether in multichannel or not - would never fit onto a standard CD - they run a total of 87 minutes. Only DVD allows the greater length. "
John Sunier

<< back