Concerto

Is there any Baroque concerto more viscerally scintillating than Bach’s specimen for four harpsichords BWV 1065? There should perhaps be inverted commas around the composer’s name: it is, after all, an irrepressibly joyous reworking of Vivaldi’s Op. 3 No. 10 for four violins – but so ingenious is Bach’s appropriation, it crowns a collection of solo and multi-keyboard concertos that enlivened the Friday night gatherings at Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig. And it signs off (almost) Aapo Häkkinen’s survey with his Helsinki Baroque Orchestra – CPE Bach maestro Miklós Spányi among his cohort of collaborators. Between them they preside over a veritable European Union of instruments, uniting German, French, Dutch and Italian models, Häkkinen’s copy of a 1760 Hass decidedly more than first among equals with its thunderous 16-foot stop. It certainly intensifies the gravitas of BWV 1063, compounded by the sumptuous legato of the opening, a somewhat bullish slow movement and brow-furrowed finale. There’s more light and shade in the C major BWV 1064: Häkkinen doesn’t let the sit down, and imbues the concluding with a smouldering, gnarly passion – something less evident in BWV 1065’s finale, though the excited chatter