Hommelcologne Co - Bach: Oboe Concertos [CD]

Johann Sebastian Bach(1685-1750) Oboe ConcertosWhen Johann Sebastian Bach, in May 1723, accepted the appointment madeshortly before, with an official contract, signed and sealed, to the positionof Cantor at the Leipzig Thomasschule, he made a decision that would havefar-reaching consequences for the immediate circumstances of his life as wellas for the main focus of his creative activity and for the handing down of hiswork. Bach himself clearly sensed the implications of this decision, since, in aletter to his old friend Georg Erdmann, he declares that it would be for him"at first quite unsuitable to change from being a Kapellmeister to being aCantor and so I considered my decision for a quarter of a year."Since his time at Weimar, from 1708 to 1717, Bach had served first asorganist and chamber musician, but then also as concert-master of a courtorchestra, an occupation of which involvement with music for instrumentalensemble was a central aspect. This professional orientation was strengthened,after his time at Weimar, by his appointment as Kapellmeister to the court ofCothen. That this position more than satisfied Bach's expectations is clearfrom his later and certainly idealised account of that period: "There wasa gracious prince, a lover and connoisseur of music, with whom I thought tospend my life."Bach found thesituation in Leipzig brought very different working conditions. Now he had tosee to the composition and organization of music in the principal churches ofLeipzig, weekly duties that left almost no time for other activities. Only withgreat effort was he able to free himself from this overwhelming burden by,between 1723 and 1729, composing three complete annual cycles of churchcantatas, providing a repertoire on which, in the following years, he coulddraw without great expense of time. After his cantata period Bach turned hisattention again to instrumental music; he composed and published a series ofdemanding keyboard works and in March 1729 took over the direction of thestudent Collegium musicum. With this still semi-professional orchestra he wasable, at least to some extent, to resume the activity he had carried out atCothen; as he had there, he could now, apart from his official duties, performregular secular celebratory cantatas and, more particularly, purelyinstrumental compositions.Nevertheless in his first years at Leipzig Bach must have come to aturning-point that would not have been easy to cross. He was able, now with adistance of years, to publish re-usable works from his time at Cothen; muchhere needed modification, adaptation to the new circumstances and conventions.At all events Bach's orchestral works have as a rule only survived in theLeipzig versions, while the artistic output of the period at Weimar and atCothen survives not even in outline. Apart from the cycle of BrandenburgConcertos, preserved only through fortunate circumstances, the body ofconcertos written for the court at Cothen is now almost completely lost.Nev