BBC Music Magazine

The greatest cadenza

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May I suggest a major contender for the greatest cadenza that is not referred to in Jessica Duchen’s article Sense of an ending (September): the harpsichor­d solo in the first movement of Bach’s Fifth Brandenbur­g Concerto? I first heard this in the Concentus Musicus Wien and Nikolaus Harnoncour­t recording (on the Das Alte Werk label), in which the solo performed by Eduard Müller was so exciting that one almost expected a huge burst of applause as the orchestra comes back in, as we often hear in jazz… sometimes despite the quality of the ‘cadenza’!

Nick Morrow Brown, Cirenceste­r

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