01	Double Concerto - Vivace			BWV 1043			03:20
	02	Double Concerto - Largo, ma non tanto			BWV 1043			07:17
	03	Double Concerto BWV - Allegro			BWV 1043			04:46
	04	Violinkonzert in La minor - (Allegro moderato)			BWV 1041			03:10
	05	Violinkonzert in La minor - Andante			BWV 1041			05:20
	06	Violinkonzert in La minor - Allegro assai			BWV 1041			03:35
	07	Violinkonzert in Mi Major - Allegro			BWV 1042			06:48
	08	Violinkonzert in Mi Major - Adagio			BWV 1042			04:55
	09	Violinkonzert in Mi Major - Allegro assai			BWV 1042			02:37

Concerto for 2 violins, strings & continuo in D minor ("Double"), BWV 1043
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Composer

Johann Sebastian Bach

Genre

Concerto

Work Type

Concerto for Two String Instruments

Composition Date

1730-1731

Publication Date

1874

Average Duration

15:50

Corrections to this Entry?

Composition Description by Roger Dettmer
This music was composed at Cothen between 1717 and 1723, and very likely first played by Joseph Spiess and Martin Friedrich Marcus with Prince Leopold's court orchestra. At Cothen Bach had no organ to play, despite his pan-German reputation as a virtuoso on that behemoth among Baroque instruments. However, he was proficient as well on the violin, the viola da gamba, and of course the clavier. Without his first choice available, or church duties such as Leipzig demanded later on, Johann Sebastian concentrated on instrumental music in various combinations — much of it subsequently lost. Along with the Brandenburg Concertos as a set, only two more concertos for solo violin and the D minor for two violins survived out of who knows how many, beyond the ones Bach rewrote at Leipzig after 1729 for one, two, three, and four claviers. All of his concertos, Brandenburgs included, had Vivaldi as their point of departure, and some were even transcriptions of the Italian master's works. Bach's genius was, of course, that he could individualize as well as transcend the music of a man indirectly his mentor. His works hadn't the sensuality or esprit of Vivaldi's; Bach was German Lutheran, bound beyond climate and environment by a religion that denounced the secular excesses in which Roman Catholicism (as Luther viewed it from within) had wallowed since the Middle Ages.

While opera had no place in Bach's education, life, or music, he was nonetheless sublimely capable of lyricism, warmth, and gentleness, never more so than in the Largo, ma non tanto middle movement of this Double Concerto, with its 12/8 Siciliano rhythm and solo lines that seem to caress one another as they overlap and intertwine. On either side of this blissful duolog, however, the Baroque contrapuntist displays his mastery of synthesis and organization. The concerto opens with a fugal exposition of two contrasting themes, and their "development" in the ritornello style through G minor and C minor before the orchestra "reprises" the opening theme one last time. The allegro finale, in triple meter, likewise features imitation and repetition with the soloists front and center. Even more than in the first movement, there is a feeling of sonata form in embryo, with the charming surprise of a reprise in G minor instead of the tonic D minor.






Concerto for violin, strings & continuo No. 1 in A minor, BWV 1041
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Composer

Johann Sebastian Bach

Genre

Concerto

Work Type

Violin Concerto

Composition Date

1730

Publication Date

1874

Average Duration

14:40

Corrections to this Entry?

Composition Description by Roger Dettmer
The court of young Prince Leopold at Cothen was the penultimate step on Bach's professional ascent from organist at Arnstadt, in 1703, to Kantor at Leipzig, from 1723 to the end of his life. He had been Konzertmeister at Weimar (1708-17) before his appointment as Kapellmeister at Cothen, where he remained for six years. He wrote much instrumental (rather than liturgical) music in this secular position, although most of it has been lost. Among the survivors were the Brandenburg Concertos and three other concertos for one or more solo violins with string and continuo accompaniment: the A minor and E major concertos for his concertmaster at Cothen, Joseph Spiess, and the D minor Concerto for Two Violins.

Formally, he cast all but Brandenburg No. 3 in three movements — quick, slow, quick — modeled on the Italian Baroque concertos of Vivaldi. Bach's genius was the ability to individualize as well as transcend the style of that older and admired contemporary who was indirectly his mentor. In the Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, BWV 1041, as in the other two violin concertos, the central movement is an aria without words — lyrical, expressively warm, ever gentle, yet inescapably melancholic in case of the A minor, perhaps the most inherently somber key in the tonal lexicon. On either side, an implicit although unmarked Allegro leads off in 2/4 time, with ritornello structure. As usual in Bach's concertos, the soloist's relationship with the full-ensemble passages hangs in a fascinating balance between competition and cooperation. A jig concludes in 3/8 time, marked Allegro assai and foreshadowing the rondos that Haydn and Mozart developed after Bach's death.




Concerto for violin, strings & continuo No. 2 in E major, BWV 1042
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Composer

Johann Sebastian Bach

Genre

Concerto

Work Type

Violin Concerto

Composition Date

before 173

Publication Date

1874

Average Duration

17:40

Corrections to this Entry?

Composition Description by Blair Johnston
This work, along with Bach's other surviving violin concerto, was composed during his stint in the service of the Prince of Anhalt-Cothen. J.N. Forkel, Bach's original biographer, describes the concerto as being "full of an unconquerable joy of life, that sings in the triumph of the first and last movements." By the time Bach composed this concerto he had long been familiar with Antonio Vivaldi's influential works in the same medium. In the concerto's scintillating and ebullient first movement (Allegro), Bach takes the basic idea of ritornello form (around which Vivaldi's and almost all other Baroque concertos are composed), employs the essential motivic processes involved in that kind of composition, and shapes the whole into a superb da capo-form dialogue between soloist and accompanying ripieno group in which neither has supremacy over the other. While a certain balance between the soloist and the accompaniment is maintained, the basic content of the movement, defined by a powerful arpeggiated triad motif (reminiscent of Vivaldi's violin concerto "Il favorito"), becomes a springboard for continuous invention and subtly virtuosic embellishment. In the central Adagio, a deeply mournful instrumental aria of unique beauty, the violin's intricate musings are woven in and around a quiet ostinato in the bass instruments. The Allegro assai rondo finale is a dance-like movement of an extraordinary exuberance. Each successive contrasting passage exploits the violin's bravura capabilities more and more, until at last the final refrain swoops in on the wings of wild thirty-second notes. The Harpsichord Concerto in D major, BWV 1054, is a transcription made by Bach, probably during the late 1730s, of this E major Violin Concerto.