Johannes Pramsohler puts the first version of Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in a cosmopolitan context of travelling virtuosos To make it clear from the start, a “travel concerto” genre does not exist. However, what one can observe time and again are certain characteristics that indicate that many a baroque solo concerto was conceived especially for journeys. The epoch of internationally touring virtuosos indeed first came into full bloom with Paganini and Liszt, and yet even a c

Johannes Pramsohler and Philippe Grisvard place Bach's Six sonatas for violin and obligato harpsichord in a new historical context and offer an intriguing snapshot of how Bach's immediate successors were influenced by his revolutionary sonata model. At the beginning of this project, the idea was actually to create a kind of counterpart to our album “Bach & Entourage” in which we wanted to present sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord from Bach’s milieu. However, during

Johannes Pramsohler explores the cultural context of the first French violin concertos France was traditionally the scene of major controversies in music. France? No, Paris! Although it brought forth only a very few great musicians itself (most of them came from the provinces!), the French capital had always seen itself as the evaluative and decision-making instance as far as stylistic questions were concerned. With the public and the music critics in the role of the canvasse

Artistic director Johannes Pramsohler discusses the programme of the new Ensemble Diderot album and explores the importance of an educational element in programming baroque music for today's audience Putting together a programme of baroque works - whether they are concertos or chamber music - is always a tricky undertaking when one doesn't want to focus on just one composer or a very specific theme. What overall mood should the concert have? How can I establish a memorable se

History often bears surprising facts. It might seem astonishing to us today, but the most performed passion of the 18th century was neither Bach’s St Matthew nor his St John Passion, but Der Tod Jesu by Carl Heinrich Graun. And the initiative behind this important work came from a woman: Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia commissioned a text from the German poet Karl Wilhelm Ramler, which she set to music herself. Her teacher held the work in such high esteem that he published p

Part 3: Weyrauch’s tablatures and a a bit about my own approach to making my own Prelude in c minor BWV 999 An autograph manuscript of the Prelude in c minor has not survived but there are several copies from the 18th century. Even though it is playable in its entirety on the lute as written, I have taken the tablatures’ lead and chosen to transpose some basses down the octave to use the diapasons basses. I think it makes a nice organ pedal effect. I have also tried to play w

Part 2: The Bach lute tablatures – the anonymous Leipzig manuscript A lute tablature is an instruction manual. While traditional musical notation shows pitches and note lengths that could in theory be played on any instrument, a lute tablature shows how to realise them on the specific lute used by whoever made the tablature (in this case, the 13-course baroque lute). This physical connection with the instrument is what sets tablature apart. While both normal notation and tabl

Part 1: Xerox vs musician – do we really want to reproduce what is written on the page? (Originally, this was meant as a supplement to the CD booklet that would go a bit more into the technical details of the Bach lute tablatures; how they differ from the manuscripts in normal notation, which interpretative clues they contain, the interpretative choices those clues led me to on the CD, and how they informed my decisions when making my own tablatures of the Fugue andDouble BWV