Our Bach from Copenhagen

During recent years the Concerto Copenhagen (CoCo) has advanced to the rank of one of the world’s leading original-sound ensembles. This success owes in large part to its charismatic music director Lars Ulrik Mortensen. He is an absolutely exceptional musician: not a bit conceited but absolutely uncompromising and nothing less than obsessed with the quest for musical truth. His interpretations completely refrain from »antics« like the supercharged tempos or unmotivated against-the-grain readings that many of his colleagues from the early music scene have unfortunately made their trademark. Therefore, cpo immediately agreed when he expressed the wish to record the complete concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach. Then too there is the fact that the ensemble’s previously released two volumes with the solo harpsichord concertos simply have to be regarded as benchmark recordings. Before the concertos for two and more harpsichords follow, we are presenting as an intermezzo the complete violin concertos and the Double Concerto for Violin and Oboe. The principal soloists are Manfredo Kraemer and CoCo’s veteran concertmaster Fredrik From.