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| Martin Berinbaum |
The Brandenburg Concertos were dedicated to the Margrave of
Brandenburg in 1721. The individual
dates for the Concerts cannot be precisely determined. No 2. was maybe composed
in 1717 or 1718. The trumpet part of No. 2 was probably written for the court
trumpeter in Cothen, Johann Ludwig Schreiber, and not for the more well known
Reiche. The violin part was probably for
the concert master in Cothen, Joseph Spiess.
In an article in Historic Brass Society Journal, called
"Bach, Reiche and the Leipzig collegia musica", the famous player and
historian Don Smithers says the following (page 30):
"We may reasonably suppose that Reiche did, in fact,
play the second Brandenburg concerto under Bach's direction with the collegium
musicum at one or another of the venues where he is known to have performed
with that ensemble. Moreover, it is not beyond the bounds of reason to suppose
that Christoph Ruhe, Reiche's successor, may have played the same work with the
same ensemble sometime after Reiche's death in October, 1734"
Unfortunately Gottried died on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 1734, and
there is the following report:
"On
precisely this day the highly skilled and most artistic musician and
Stadtpfeifer, Herr Gottfried Reiche, the Leucopetra-Misnicus and senior member
of the municipal company of musicians in this place, suffered a stroke as he
was going home and dropped dead in the Stadtpfeifer-Allee not far from his
house where he was taken. The reason for this was on account of the enormous
strain he suffered the night before while blowing [the trumpet] for the royal
music, his condition having been greatly aggravated from the smoke given off by
the torch-lights."
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| Gottfried Reich |
However the instrument it this famous portrait of Reiche by
Housemann, is a Jägertrompete or hunting trumpet, and was not the style of instrument that
would have been used in the original
performances and reproductions of which are used today.
Current original instrument players use a long
"wrapped" model. The current "Baroque" or
"Clarino" trumpet (so called
because of the range in which it plays) that is used in authentic performances of
the 2nd Brandenburg, is pitched in the
key of F (or E) which means that it can only be used for music that is in the
key of F major as the instrument can only play those notes that fall in the
natural harmonic series of the instrument. "Baroque" trumpets can be
manufactured for all keys, but they can only play in one key at a time. Most
often when Bach wrote music for trumpet he wrote in the key of D.
The 2nd Brandenburg is in the higher key of F major and is
considered one of the most demanding trumpet parts ever written because of the
high tessitura of the part.
There are three high concert G's in the first movement which
come late in the movement and are challenging even on the modern piccolo
trumpet.
Thankfully Bach had the foresight, or good common sense, to
leave the trumpet out of the slow second movement which gives the trumpeter a 3 or 4 minute break, but then
immediately brings the trumpet back in to begin the 3rd movement.
The contrapuntal interplay between the solo instruments
immediately displays the four tonal characteristics of each instrument as each
instrument enters and copies the music played by the trumpet in the first four
bars.
Bach's genius of partnering the Clarino trumpet with a solo
group of one oboe, one violin, one flute and one trumpet with an accompanying
group of strings was unique and was never repeated in this way.
In a second email Berinbaum added his own personal experiences in performing the Number 2:
I played the 2nd Brandenburg about 40-50 times at least,
starting in 1962 but always on a modern piccolo trumpet, never on Clarino. I recorded it several times for Columbia and
CBC, and Nonesuch and while I owned a set of Natural trumpets in all the keys,
and I attempted to learn the Brandenburg on one, I never followed through. I always found it very difficult to go back
and forth between a modern instrument and a "Baroque" instrument for
reasons that are really technical in "trumpet talk" i.e.. mouthpiece
size, bore size etc. One never wants the difficulty of playing an instrument to overshadow the
beauty and symmetry and effect of the music itself. Musical performance should
always "sound easy" (even if it is not) to the audience and that is
difficult when it comes to the 2nd Brandenburg on any instrument modern or old.
I do remember the first time I played the piece on piccolo
trumpet in 1962 though, mostly because it was with a famous recorder player
Carl Dolmetch at the Idyllwild Music Camp in California. The problem then, as it is now, is that it
is very difficult to balance the volume of a modern piccolo trumpet with a
recorder (rather more so than modern flute) and even a modern oboe and
violin. Maurice André, the famous French
trumpet player, who played the piece
hundreds of times, more than anyone else ever,
had a little loosely knitted "bonnet" that he put over the
bell of his piccolo trumpet to soften it and allow him to play more comfortably
without covering the other instruments.
Kris Kwapis on playing Bach's Number 2
This Friday's concert at the Vancouver Playhouse