For those listeners who like their Brandenburgs played fast and tight, try the
Musica Antiqua Köln's astoundingly virtuosic recordings on Archiv. For listeners who like their Brandenburgs played fast and loose, try the
Swiss Baroque Soloists' swift but scrappy recordings on Naxos. It's not that the period instrument players here can't play the music -- clearly, they're all fine players -- it's that they can't play them at this speed. As led from the violin by Andréas Gabetta, the
SBS races simply to keep up and sometimes, as in the finale of the Third and Fourth concertos, it just can't do it. The soloists try to execute their parts at these speeds, but some of them -- trumpet player
Niklas Eklund is particularly egregious -- just can't do it. But even when everyone can play the music at this speed, the result is less aesthetic than athletic and less musical than muscular. The inclusion of the Trio Sonata from the "Musical Offering" and a transcription of the Concerto in G minor for flute and strings make for nice bonuses, but at these tempos, the performances are still not especially appealing. Naxos' sound is a bit too close and a tad too raw.