First issued in the
1960s and not, I think, previously issued
on CD, this was originally part of a
pioneering series of early music recordings.
Koch and – especially – Gustav Leonhardt
are, of course, important performers
of the early-music repertoire. For all
that, listening afresh to these performances
some forty-five years after they were
recorded, is a somewhat disappointing
experience.
The CD is issued complete
with what are, I presume, the notes
from its original issue on LP. These
tell us that the three sonatas for viola
da gamba were written between 1717 and
1723, while Bach was Kappelmeister at
the court of Cöthen, and make much
of this fact. However, more recent scholarship
is largely agreed that they were written
a good deal later, at the end of the
1730s or even in the early 1740s.
It would be fair to
say that our tastes in the performance
of Bach have changed a good deal in
the years since these recordings were
made. To take but a single example,
we now expect rather more flexibility
of rhythm; we are less simply convinced
that this music has to be recorded with
the viola da gamba accompanied by the
harpsichord alone. Later recordings
have included one with Markku Luolajan-Mikkola’s
viola da gamba partnered by Miklos Spanyi’s
tangent piano (on BIS) and Peter Wispelwey’s
violoncello piccolo accompanied by Richard
Eggar switching between harpsichord,
organ and fortepiano and Daniel Yeadon
playing baroque cello (Channel Classics).
Ideas about the nature of continuo,
in short, are not quite as they were.
BWV 1027 is in Sonata
da chiesa form, an adaptation of BWV
1039 (a sonata for two flutes and continuo)
with the harpsichord now given one of
the two flute parts. The opening adagio
is a dignified and expressive movement,
and it has to be said that Koch and
Leonhardt sound rather inhibited, as
indeed they do in the following allegro
ma non tanto, which should surely sound
a good deal more exuberant than it does
here. In some performances – such as
that by Alison Crum and Laurence Cummings
(on Signum), the music has a persuasive
swagger which sounds very right. Things
are rather flatter here, the playing
having a rather relentless quality to
it. The andante works better, its hypnotic
quality conveyed successfully. The final
allegro moderato isn’t quite as vivacious
as it can be – as for example in the
recording by Juan Manuel Quintana and
Celine Frisch (on Harmonia Mundi); Leonhardt
and Koch, by comparison, sound a little
stiff and effortful.
It isn’t, I think,
necessary to go through the other two
sonatas making the same kind of comments.
I am an admirer of Leonhardt, in particular
(I love some of his later recordings
of Bach), and I must stress that he
and Koch are musicians of too high an
order for these to be bad or uninteresting
performances. But, it has to be said,
they have been surpassed by some of
those who have followed them – performers
who have, of course, benefited from
the work of performers such as these
two pioneers.
The recording quality
is quite good, but can’t, naturally,
compete with that of some later recordings.
The balance is generally good – something
that is not always easy to achieve in
these sonatas. But, even at mid-price,
a playing time of (just) forty minutes
isn’t really acceptable these days.
Glyn Pursglove
Johannes Koch (viola da gamba) 
