The greatest cadenza
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