Classical Music | Music for Harpsichord

Johann Sebastian Bach

Harpsichord Concerto in d minor Play Play

David Schrader	Harpsichord
Baroque Band	Ensemble

Recorded on 05/24/2007, uploaded on 09/24/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Harpsichord Concerto in d minor Johann Sebastian Bach

Allegro, Adagio, Allegro

Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel deserve credit for inventing, as it were, the keyboard concerto. Handel did so with the concertos for organ that he often played in between sections of his oratorios, and Bach with the increasingly prominent part for the harpsichord in the fifth concerto of the Brandenburg set. The keyboard instruments had always enjoyed a generous helping of solo repertoire, but in ensembles, they were generally used for accompaniment. Bach and Handel brought them to the fore in their concertos and set the precendent for countless works composed since. Bach's clavier concertos were probably written for use in the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, which Bach directed for some time toward the end of his career. The concerto in D Minor heard this evening is most likely a transcription of a now-lost violin concerto—many of the musical devices reflect probable origins in string writing, especially in the first movement. The concerto reflects more the ideals of the "modern" concerto as popularized by Vivaldi in his preference for the fast-slow-fast order of movements. The outer movements are characterized by driving, motoric rhythms characteristic of Vivaldi's style (Bach had, during his years in Weimar, had access to the Ducal library's extensive collection of Italian works and had made many transcriptions of pieces by Vivaldi for organ and harpsichord), and the second movement is based upon a freely repeating bass pattern over which a beautifully decorated melody is worked out. This concerto must rated highly in the estimation of Bach's son, Carl Philip Emmanuel, who made his own arrangement of it some years later. David Schrader