Bach Brandenberg Concertos CD Recommendation

Benjamin Britten conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.
If you follow the Penguin guide it's their "Rosette" choice.
Also if you don't want historical instruments.

You should give Jordi Savall and his band on Astree a try. A close second is Pinnock and the English Consort. The Astree has uniformly better sonics, in fact Astree gets my vote for the best early music label because of their interesting repertoire, outstanding performances and state of the art sonics.

Preference for Period Instruments: Roy Goodman conducting the Brandenburg Consort on Hyperion Dyad CDD22001. This is at a bargain price fortunately. Superb sonics also.

Preference for Modern Instruments:
David Shifrin, director of The Chamber Society of Lincoln Center on Delos DE 3185. Superb sonics also.

Alternative: TafelMusik with Jeanne Lamon on Sony 66289. Also with great sonics.

All three choices offer in addition to the fine sound--- wonderfully alive and consumately stylized playing. Additionally, they are all musically and emotionally unmannered performances which touch the soul and heart. Take your pick and enjoy! If one can, buy all three. They are worth every dollar spent for the bountiful joy they will engender time after time.

Please check out the 6 Brandenburg Concertos performed by the Musica Antiqua Koln conducted by Reinhard Goebel under the Archiv label. The performance has speed, energy and discipline without being overly regimented. To me, Trevor Pinnock's interpretation sounds overly technical and lacks a bit of life.

coebest6@aol.com:

Sometimes I go with the "big names" because they released a good version! It so happens that some "big names" are actually earned/justified.

That being said, one of my recommended recordings is the TafelMusik one (with Jeanne Lamon), as seconded by Arcangelo. There are no "big names" with this one.