The Bachs.
Shunske Sato, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. ★★★★
City Recital Hall. July 13

Great minds may not necessarily think alike, but over the last three weeks they seem to have encouraged three of Sydney’s orchestras to do so. The great minds in this case belong to the Bach family, relatives close and distant of their most famous son Johann Sebastian.

The family’s collective musical achievement was the subject of guest director Shunske Sato’s program with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, after similarly themed recent concerts from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Although the three concerts have featured a couple of “snap” moments – both the Brandenburg Orchestra and the ACO featured a 17th-century Sonata a 5 in F by Heinrich Bach, JS’s great uncle, while J.S Bach’s Double Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor, BWV 1060R was a memorable centrepiece for both the SSO and the present concert – this is music one can’t really have too much of.

Sato plays with nimble freedom and fluid ease. In the Double Concerto, he seemed to “sit back” on the beat, allowing plenty of time to fill in the divisions which flowed with grace and occasional ornamentation. His partner in the Double Concerto, Baroque oboist Emma Black pursued a purer approach to line, giving it a sculpted shape and smooth, light woody sound – velvety, rich and mellow.

After the Heinrich Bach sonata, in which Sato and the orchestra emphasised the music’s brisk energy, as opposed to the languorous side brought out by the ACO, they sampled excerpts from a suite by Johann Ludwig Bach, third cousin to JS, with energy in the overture and buoyant spring in the bouree.

Each half featured a work by one of JS Bach’s sons, a lively three-movement symphony in E flat by the second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, in the first half, and fragments of an incomplete symphony in A by JS’s oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann in the second.

Since the fragment began mid-movement, harpsichordist Anthony Abouhamad provided a free introduction with an excerpt from a fantasia by the same composer.