The Brandenburg Year
Bach doesn’t know it, but he was my first. The first classical music record I ever bought with my own money was a recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos and I just about wore it out.
I’m not alone. The six Brandenburgs are among the most loved pieces in classical repertoire. They get played all the time and all different ways, from big romantic orchestra versions to Wendy Carlos’s analogue-synthesized
Switched On Bach in the 60’s and 70’s.
As Baroque specialists, Tempesta di Mare’s musicians are in constant demand from other groups to play the Brandenburgs. They know them inside and out. Still, Tempesta di
Mare as a group has never played all the Brandenburgs before. Devoting Tempesta di
Mare’s eighth season to the six Brandenburgs together makes it a real event.
“To me, the Brandenburgs are a supremely well-considered conversation among instrumental voices,” says Gwyn Roberts, Tempesta di Mare Artistic Co-Director.
“Playing these pieces with Tempesta, a group that’s always communicated well with each other musically and is just getting better and better at it each time we play—that’s exciting. I’m really looking forward to it.”
But Tempesta is taking the Brandenburgs a step further. Instead of playing the six
Brandenburgs as a block, Tempesta will examine each one in detail over the course of the season. “It’s a great chance to spring off the Brandenburgs and surround them with other music that relates to them,” says Richard Stone, Tempesta di Mare’s other Artistic Co-
Director. Each concert will set one or two of the Brandenburgs alongside work earlier or contemporary to it, mixing familiar work with new discoveries.
Bach assembled the six pieces known as the Brandenburg Concertos to send to Christian
Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in Berlin in 1721. Astonishingly diverse, they cram in an amazing number of influences, from sacred music to chamber music to national styles jostling each other, cheek to jowl with old and new types of composition and musical thinking—and a full spectrum of instrumental color.
While the Brandenburgs are distinctive, they are not unique. “They have their own friends, neighbors, and family across the repertoire in terms of forms and relationships,” says Richard Stone. Stone and Gwyn Roberts are betting that audiences will meet these new friends through the Brandenburgs and take them to heart.
The October concert pairs Brandenburg #1, a “concerto-suite” which includes the instrumental novelties “piccolo violin” and a hunting horns, with another concerto-suites by G. P. Telemann. Also: suites by Tempesta-specialty Johann Friedrich Fasch and

Georg Muffat, a Europe-trotter who brought the French dance craze to the north in the generation before Bach.
December’s show features two big solos, harpsichordist Adam Pearl taking the spotlight in Brandenburg #5 and Richard Stone in a Fasch lute concerto, set against ensemble pieces by Johann Pachelbel, Christoph Graupner and Telemann in which virtuosos play off each other as “first among equals,” in Gwyn Roberts’ words.
January brings Brandenburgs # 2 and # 3 and some of the tempestuous repertoire by
Venetian Antonio Vivaldi that fired Europe up in the 1710’s. Pro Musica Rara,
Baltimore’s premier early music ensemble, joins Tempesta to swell the forces for
Vivaldi-inspired works by J. D. Heinichen and J. G. Pisendel and two Vivaldi concertos, one featuring Gwyn Roberts on recorder and the other featuring Tempesta concertmaster
Emlyn Ngai and cellist Eve Miller along with violinist—and former Tempesta concertmistress—Cynthia Roberts and cellist Allen Whear from Musica Rara.
March breaks away from Bach with a special Holy Week program of cantatas by Bach’s contemporary Jan Dismas Zelenka, who is receiving increasing recognition for his highly individualistic and expressive compositions. Zelenka’s
Lamentations of Jeremiah sets a somber text with hopefulness and even joy, “really beautiful and varied—gorgeous!” says
Richard Stone. With vocal soloists Lorie Gratis, Aaron Sheehan and Sumner Thomson.
In May, Brandenburg #6, comprised entirely of low strings (no violins) and #4, with double recorders and violin, are joined by an American premiere of Telemann’s Suite in
G Minor and his Double Concerto for flute and violin. “This concert offers work that shows without question just why Telemann and Bach are famous,” says Roberts. It also includes Evaristo Felice Dall-Abaco’s double flute concerto, a “why-have-I-never-heardof-this-guy-before” kind of discovery, according to Roberts.
Remember that old Brandenburg LP that I was telling you about, the one I ground into oblivion on my Radio Shack turntable years ago? It turned out to be a starter drug. It sent me off on a journey looking for—and finding—music that I love as much as Bach’s magic six. I don’t know about you, but I’m tickled pink to have Tempesta di Mare introducing me to their special Brandenburg friends this year. I’m already making space for them on the shelf (and my hard drive and brain!).