Bunny Jumps

Reproducido 510 veces

dalcrose:

Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C Major, BWV 1061

I. Mvt. 1

Café Zimmermann 
Pablo Valetti, violon & Konzertmeister
Céline Frisch, Dirk Börner, clavecins 

Enregistré à l’Arsenal de Metz en février 2004.

© 2008 Alpha

 Of all the concertos for one harpsichord or more and strings, the Concerto in C major for two harpsichord and strings BWV 1061 is, as far as we know at the moment, the only original clavier composition. Unlike the others, it appears to date from the end of the Weimar period, when Bach discovered the Italian concerto, rather than from Leipzig. Little is known about its gestation. Its two keyboard part is exist in autograph, assisted, completed and revised by Bach’s wife Anna Magdalena, but the string parts are not preserved in Bach’s own hand. Thus it seems quite likely that it was first composed as an unaccompanied duet for two harpsichords, and that the orchestration was added later, perhaps by someone other than Bach. The strings are not heard at all in the middle movement, a melancholy siciliano, marked Adagio ovvero Largo, and they participate only briefly in the last movement, an admirable fugue in four distinct sections. The lively first movement is contrapuntally dense. Forkel, Bach’s first biographer, writing in 1802, found this concerto ‘as new as if it had been written yesterday; it may be played entirely without the stringed instruments and still be admirable in its effect.’

— from liner note by Gilles Cantagrel (Translation: Mary Pardoe)