Bach: Orchestral Suites

Begin with an overture, then notice how much smaller the room becomes when a dance follows it. That change of scale offers an inviting route into Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert’s Bach. The pleasure lies as much in the distance between movements as in the familiar melodies inside them.

This selection concerns their recordings from 1978–79, rather than music composed in those years. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the works; Pinnock and The English Concert perform them. The linked service edition assembles all four suites in twenty-four tracks under a 1999 compilation date. Its date identifies the edition, not a new recording session. The first three suites were recorded in London in 1978 and the fourth in Munich in 1979.

Let the entrance establish the scale

An orchestral suite groups dances after a substantial opening. The French overture moves from stately, uneven rhythmic figures into quicker music whose lines enter in succession. You need not identify every dance by name. Listen instead for how each subsequent movement resets the weight of a step. Skipping directly to the famous extracts removes the large frame against which these smaller forms register.

Four fresh beginnings

The surviving suites were not conceived as one continuous four-part narrative. Each opening can therefore be treated as a fresh start. The flute provides a particularly useful thread through the second suite; the third offers the familiar Air after its extensive overture. Hearing the collection in numbered order invites comparison without requiring an imagined plot linking one work to another.

Restore the neighbours

Try the second suite’s Menuet immediately before its Badinerie, then the third suite’s overture before its Air. These pairings change the job of a familiar piece: a miniature becomes a conclusion, and a slow movement becomes a spacious interval within a larger design. Return afterwards to a complete suite. Its changing dimensions give the ear something concrete to follow, even when the terminology remains unfamiliar. This is also a useful way to hear an album of separate works without turning it into a playlist of isolated highlights.