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April is a wonderful time for Baroque music here in the city of Winnipeg. The spring sounds from the iconic The Seasons from Antonio Vivaldi and the unmistakable beauty of the late-March birthday boy J.S. Bach make perfect soundtracks for this time of year. Closer to home, the Winnipeg Baroque Festival is taking the city by storm with sixteen Baroque music offerings over the course of three weeks.
Not to be outdone, Classic 107's Album of the Month for April 2025 is a perfect example of Bach’s technical mastery combined with one of Manitoba’s finest musical exports. J.S. Bach: The Complete Violin Concertos is the latest collaboration between Brandon’s own James Ehnes and the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and it features not only the surviving two solo works in the genre, but also reconstructions of fragments of concertos also intended for violin made by Ehnes himself.
“This project has been a dream of mine for a long time,” Ehnes says in the album's liner notes. “I wanted to record them with the type of ensemble that could make a real impact. These players are some of my closest friends, even away from music. It was so special to dive into a project like this together with musicians with whom there’s no barrier of formality or unfamiliarity.”
Alongside the solo violin concertos, Ehnes also recorded the Concerto for Two Violins, BWV 1043 with the NAC Orchestra’s concertmaster Yosuke Kawasaki and the unfinished Concerto for Three Violins, BWV 1064R along with associate concertmaster Jessica Linnebach. Other collaborations on this project include the Concerto for Flute, Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1044 with guest harpsichordist Luc Beausejour and principal flute Joanna G’froerer, and concertos for violin and oboe with principal oboist Charles Hamann.
“It was an absolute delight for me as concertmaster and a soloist to collaborate with our good friend James Ehnes on this album,” said Kawasaki of the project. “Our orchestra’s early roots developed in this kind of repertoire. Even though we have grown and evolved to play a much broader range of music, this partnership is a happy reminder of how wonderfully this orchestra performs as such a responsive and flexible ensemble in works from the Baroque.”
You can hear excerpts from J.S. Bach: The Complete Violin Concertos on Morning Light with Nolan Kehler on Classic 107 every Wednesday morning just after 7:30 a.m. throughout the month of April.