Badinerie - J S Bach For Three Recorders

In the eighteenth century, a Badinerie (fr. badiner = to flirt, joke around) was a light and enjoyable piece of music, which along with the Gavotte, Sarabande, Minuet, and other dance movements, could be part of a suite. Badinerie was the name Johann Sebastian Bach gave to the final movement of his Overture, BWV 1067. We chose this title for our recording of some of his three-voice compositions because we enjoy playing these pieces (which Bach scored mostly for keyboard) on the recorder - with a twinkle in our eye, presenting them to the great master on a "living organ."

Our recording combines pieces of varying complexity - some of them have an intricate structure, contrapuntally elaborated down to the last detail, while others are structurally simple, playful, and lighthearted works. All in all, a potpourri, perhaps a Notebook for the Ensemble Dreiklang Berlin, with an uninhibited diversity reminding us of the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (from which some of our pieces are in fact taken). Most of the other works were composed, or at least begun, during the same period as Anna Magdalena's notebook - Bach wrote them between 1717 and 1723, when he was employed by Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen as "Capellmeister and Hof-Compositeur."