Masaaki Suzuki: belief

Transcript context

…The Brandenburg Concerti — what is it exactly that makes them such a major advance over the music that came before? Because they seem to come out of nowhere, and they’re so fully blown. The solos are incredible, right? The ensemble work. Yes. I think that was Bach’s intention, to compile the six concertos as one collection, but probably by then, he had composed many concertos. I think that is very simple. The New Yorker Bach specialist, Michael Marissen, has written that Brandenburg Concerto was a symbol. His intention was to represent the social hierarchy. Number one is with two horns. That is the usual symbol for the court, the dignity of the court. The second one is the trumpet solo, oboe, recorder, and violin. Those four instruments are supposed to be performed by any stadtpfeifer. They have to master all these instruments, and so on and so on. Number three is very interesting. This number was made by Bach himself, and that is three violins, three violas, three vicelli. That’s everything dominated by three. But he didn’t compose a second movement. That is, the actual movements were supposed to also be three, but the second one is missing, and only one bar in the middle of the page. He clearly intended to improvise that second movement himself. That was the intention for the Berlin — we wanted to dedicate it to the Berlin Graf. Then if you hire me, I can improvise for this movement — something like that. [laughs] What is it in contemporary classical music that you enjoy?…

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