Simon Borutzki & Ensemble|Bach all’italiano

Johann Sebastian Bach most likely is the composer whose music has been arranged most commonly throughout history. However, it is a less known fact that Bach himself acted as an arranger of music from the hand of other composers. For instance, he skilfully transcribed the violin concertos of his Italian colleagues Allesandro Marcello (1673–1747) and Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) for the harpsichord, in such a manner that both – the composer and the arranger – appear to meld into one congenial entity. For Bach all’Italiano, the recorder player Simon Borutzki and the harpsicordist Clemens Flick examined these transcriptions and arranged a selection of them into concertos for recorder and continuo ensemble, which maintain their Italian sentiment and the German texture of Bach’s renditions and at the same time enrich them with the unique tonal qualities of the various flutes. After all, as the music critic Johann Mattheson said in 1739: “Borrowing is a permissible thing; but you have to make the imitations in such a fashion that they obtain an appearance nicer and better than the movements they were borrowed from.” With this intention, recorder player Simon Borutzki, by means of his eight concertos, offers a totally new and highly unique view of Bach’s adaptation of the Italian style – entirely in the sense of baroque instrumentations typical of a concerto da camera.