Word: brandenburg
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Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 is rarely played in the concert hall-and even more rarely played well. But Bach himself would have been pleased with last week's performance by the Hamburg Chamber Orchestra, and the Hamburg Musikhalle echoed to a stamping, shouting ovation. The orchestra had provided a dividend: playing the fiendishly difficult trumpet part was perhaps the best classical trumpeter in Europe-the North German Radio Orchestra's pint-sized (5 ft. 1 in.), portly (187 Ibs.) Adolf Scherbaum...
...lungs like bellows. Even experts can rarely coax it into anything more than a banshee wail; Scherbaum produces a ringing, jubilant tone that is the joy of Bach lovers-and of Michael Haydn and Leopold Mozart fans as well. Of all the pieces he plays, the toughest is the Brandenburg No. 2: in the upper range it soars to G above high C, and wise conductors almost always cheat on the trumpet part and make do with an E-flat clarinet or a soprano saxophone. As distinguished a musician as the Vienna Philharmonic's Helmuth Wobisch has been known...
Just a Hobby. Scherbaum sailed through the Brandenburg No. 2 last week as if it were as simple as Au Clair de la Lune. Nonchalantly placing his weight on one leg, the egg-shaped instrumentalist blew through the intricacies of the high coloratura with characteristic ease; he blasted a final, full-volume flourish that brought an audible gasp from the audience. Chances are that he could have gone through the whole piece with his eyes shut: he has recorded the concerto for 14 different labels, has become so thoroughly identified with it that in Western and Eastern Europe alike...
Joseph Schaaf, teacher of music at Weston Music School, is shown conducting a sight reading of Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto at Dunster House yesterday afternoon...
Schenck cannot be blamed for the worst performed number, Bach's Sixth Brandenburg Concerto; it was led by Bentley Layton, next year's conductor of the orchestra. Bach scored the Sixth Brandenburg for a chamber orchestra: two violas, two gambas (played by 'celli), a solo cello, continuo and bass. In the first movement, all the instruments except continuo and bass supposedly take turns as soloists, and thereafter only the 'cello and violas play the solo lines. This distribution threw the heaviest burden on the performers in the ensemble least able to hear it. The 'cellos and violas had to struggle...