Budapest Strings Chamber Orchestra

One of the very finest pieces in Bach’s unbelievably rich cantata oeuvre is the Ich habe genug solo cantata, which soprano soloists, and more recently countertenors, are delighted to have in their repertoires. The work was originally scored for bass vocal, and at this concert featuring Budapest Strings, our globetrotting bass singer Gábor Bretz performs the work according to the first version written in 1727. Vivaldi’s opera L’Olimpiade dates from just a few years later and the symphony in E minor of C. P. E. Bach was created six years after the death of his father. Adolf Hasse, one of the greatest musical authorities at the time, said of the three-movement work that he had never heard anything better. In all likelihood, Hasse attended a string orchestral recital of the work, the Budapest Strings concert plays it supplemented with wind instruments. In the second half of the concert, Gábor Bretz portrays three very different operatic figures, and it is not impossible that a fourth will make an appearance…