J S Bach - Musical Offering BWV 1079
The Kuijken Ensemble
Barthold Kuijken (Transverse Flute);
Sigiswald Kuijken (Violin);
Wieland Kuijken (Viola da gamba);
Robert Kohnen (Harpsichord)
Recorded live at the Old Town Hall, Leipzig, Germany.

The Kuijken Ensemble’s performance is a masterful one, characterized by an expressive style so elegant and refined that the question of technical demand never even enters one’s mind. The difficulties of Bach’s writing—and there are many challenges here—remain comfortably sub rosa, while expression and affectivity trump all other concerns. And that this is the case transforms the canons from works of potential abstraction to intensely personal statements. When the Kuijken brothers were presented with the York Early Music Festival Life Time Achievement Award, the presenter, Klaus Neumann, quoted Wieland Kuijken in what must surely be the brothers’ signature motto: “I keep fast to the idea that music is an intimate reaction between the score and its interpreter. Soul and heart have the last word.” And that “last word” is clearly their point of departure here.

The trademarks of this elegant playing surface in the details, of course—details like the sensitively contoured motions of phrase and motive, the variety of articulation, or the richness of vowel in the flute sound. Tellingly, the elegance seems equally as at home in the decorative filigree of the sonata as in the expansiveness of the six-voice ricercar.

The DVD records a live concert presented at the Altes Rathaus in Leipzig at the 2000 Leipzig Bach Festival. The nature of the visual content is straight forward with little to distract the viewer from the music. Given the nature of the music and the intensity of the performance, this is a well chosen approach. However, if the DVD is viewed as a visual work itself, not just a visual record of the concert, it might have benefited from a greater exploration of the room and a wider range of perspective. It was also a regrettable coincidence that found Kohnen seated in front of a broadsword mounted on the wall, with the predictable effect that at times it seemed to be growing from out of his head.

The Musical Offering is well represented in numerous recordings. For elegance and richness of expression, this one should go to the top of the list.

Steven Plank

Aspect Ratio 16:9
PCM Stereo
Dolby Digital 5.1
Colour
Region 0 - All Regions
Video system NTSC

Uncompressed.

53 mins