Familiar and little-known masterpieces of concertante writing by Bach in an unfamiliar context and sparkling new performances. By transcribing its haunting Sinfonia for two pianos, Gy?rgy Kurt?g gave the early ‘Actus Tragicus’ funeral cantata by Bach a second life. He was only following good Bachian practice, which was to make the best of what was available to him. In his sinfonias, Bach often reused movements from previously composed longer instrumental works – some of them now lost in their original, others still very much with us, such as the Brandenburg Concertos. When adapting the first movement of the Third as the opening gambit of BWV174, Bach added wind and a pair of virtuoso horn parts with a flair and audacity that would make most modern transcribers quail. The album ends with a much straighter transcription of the exuberant hunt music for the horn-led first movement to Brandenburg No.1 repurposed as the Sinfonia to BWV52.
