Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 as concerto grosso: the first, third and sixth of these concertos have however no concertino versus orchestra distinction. The concerto grosso was a Roman invention, typically featuring two violins and a cello as concertino, with a string orchestra of multiple string instruments per part. Venetian composers seemed slow in adopting the genre, and as Bach and his German contemporaries rather turned to Venetian music they may have been hardly aware of it. The fifth "Brandenburg Concerto" seems intended to be performed with one instrument per part, as to not overpower the harpsichord with its relatively restrained volume, and was not
Brandenburg Brandenburg Brandenburg (; , Lower Sorbian: "Bramborska", ) is a state of Germany. Brandenburg is located in the northeast of Germany covering an area of and has a population of 2.5 million residents, the fifth-largest German state by area and tenth-most populous. Potsdam is the state capital and largest city, while other major cities include Brandenburg an der Havel, Cottbus, and Frankfurt (Oder). Brandenburg surrounds the national capital and city-state of Berlin, which together form the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, the third-largest metropolitan area in Germany. Brandenburg borders the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, and an international border