Lyrics:

Scholars from Donald Tovey onwards have generally agreed that the Concerto in A major, BWV1055, started life as a concerto for oboe damorean alto instrument lying midway between the oboe and cor anglaisbefore Bach reworked it for harpsichord. In its reconstructed oboe damore version, this delightful work has become justly popular. But while the solo part lies lower than that of the other concertos on this recording, the concerto works equally well reconstructed for violin.

The first and last movementsblither and less contrapuntally dense than their counterparts in the A minor and E major concertosare Bach in feel-good Brandenburg mode. From its initial entry on the sonorous, throaty G string, the solo violin frequently plays below the orchestral first violins. The central Larghetto, a melancholy siciliano in F sharp minor, counterpoints an expressively ornamented solo line with another rhythmic ostinato, announced in the opening bars by the violins against a chromatically descending bass line. Bach then turns the ostinato pattern upside down in an assuaging major-keyed episode. As in the E major Concerto, the finale is a lilting Passepied, set in motion by a tumbling theme of irresistible verve and grace.

from notes by Richard Wigmore © 2015

Album notes:
A generation ago it was confidently assumed that Bachs famous violin concertos in A minor and E major, like the Brandenburgs, date from his years as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen (17171723). This cannot be disproved. At the enlightened Cöthen court (the Prince was an enthusiastic and accomplished musician) Bach certainly composed and performed concertos for wind and strings, many of them now lost. Some of these works were later transcribed as harpsichord concertos. Over the last thirty years, though, long-held Bachian assumptions have come under the microscope. In 1985 the scholar Christoph Wolff first proposed that the A minor Concerto, at least, was composed not for Cöthen but for the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig around 1730. While there is, as so often with Bach, no clinching evidence, Wolffs thesis is supported by the existence of Bachs own autograph performing parts of the A minor Concerto from that time. Whatever its origins, we can guess that the E major Concerto, too, featured in the Collegium Musicums concerts.

Bachs friend Telemann had founded the Leipzig Collegium Musicum as a student ensemble in 1702. Bach took it over in 1729, happy to widen his sphere of activity amid his frustrations (usually over funds and/or the quality of the available musical resources) as Thomaskantor and Director chori musici. By then the Collegium Musicum included both students and professional musicians who assembled each Friday evening for concerts at Gottfried Zimmermanns elegant new coffee house in the Katharinenstraße, a magnet for the Leipzig beau monde and the merchants who visited the citys spring trade fairs. In summer, weather permitting, the musicians moved to Zimmermanns coffee garden outside the city walls. Bach was a fine fiddler (his second son Carl Philipp Emanuel recalled in his obituary that he played the violin cleanly and penetratingly), and often directed the Collegium Musicum orchestra from the violin in his Leipzig coffee concerts. In an age when the distinction between star soloist and ensemble player was more blurred than it is today, we can guess that Bach sometimes performed the A minor and E major concertos himself, with one or more of his sons in the orchestra.

By the 1720s Vivaldis concertos for violin and just about every other instrument under the sun had fuelled something of a concerto craze throughout Europe. Bach was not immune to the Italians influence; and both outer movements of the Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV1041, owe a debt to Vivaldi in their propulsive, catchy themes, and their use of Vivaldian ritornello structure, in which orchestral tuttis alternate with solo episodes. The arresting rhythmic motif that launches the first movement is just the kind of gambit Bach picked up from across the Alps. Yet even at his most Italianate, Bach cannot resist Teutonic elaboration and development. Compared with Vivaldis, his textures and harmony are more complex, and the division between solo and tutti episodes less clear-cut. Opening in fugal style (with the theme propounded in turn by first violins, second violins and basses), the finale is a bouncy 9/8 gigue that grows more and more virtuosic, culminating in a dazzling display of string-crossing. Between these exhilarating fast movements, the C major Andante is a rapt meditation, with the soloist spinning a quasi-improvised cantilena over a sternly repeated bass motifa free, Bachian variant of the traditional Baroque ground bass.

Kick-started by three Vivaldian hammer-blows, the opening Allegro of the Violin Concerto in E major, BWV1042, initially seems to be another ritornello design. But after a long, impassioned solo episode in C sharp minor (underpinned by the ubiquitous three-note motif) and a mini-cadenza, Bach then writes da capo al fine to create a ternary (ABA) structure akin to the operatic da capo aria. Like the Andante of the A minor Concerto, the central Adagio, in C sharp minor, sets up a tension between a solemn repeated ostinato bass and the rhapsodic lines spun by the solo violin, like an inspired improvisation. The mood here is one of profound, almost morbid, inwardnessa Bachian speciality. Introspection is then banished in the robust physicality of the finale, a symmetrical rondo in the rhythm of a Passepied (a lustier cousin of the minuet) that alternates a fetching dance tune with ever more exuberant solo episodes.

During his years in Cöthen Bach had virtually invented the harpsichord concerto with his Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. Nearly two decades later, around 17389, he arranged both the A minor and E major violin concertos for harpsichord, doubtless for performance by himself and others at Zimmermanns coffee concerts, and made harpsichord transcriptions of several other concertos that are now lost (with dozens of disappearing cantatas, plus Passions and other works, no other great composer has suffered such a high casualty rate). Scholars from Donald Tovey onwards have generally agreed that the Concerto in A major, BWV1055, started life as a concerto for oboe damorean alto instrument lying midway between the oboe and cor anglaisbefore Bach reworked it for harpsichord. In its reconstructed oboe damore version, this delightful work has become justly popular. But while the solo part lies lower than that of the other concertos on this recording, the concerto works equally well reconstructed for violin.

The first and last movementsblither and less contrapuntally dense than their counterparts in the A minor and E major concertosare Bach in feel-good Brandenburg mode. From its initial entry on the sonorous, throaty G string, the solo violin frequently plays below the orchestral first violins. The central Larghetto, a melancholy siciliano in F sharp minor, counterpoints an expressively ornamented solo line with another rhythmic ostinato, announced in the opening bars by the violins against a chromatically descending bass line. Bach then turns the ostinato pattern upside down in an assuaging major-keyed episode. As in the E major Concerto, the finale is a lilting Passepied, set in motion by a tumbling theme of irresistible verve and grace.

Even by Bachian standards, the Violin Concerto in G minor, BWV1056, is something of a scholarly minefield. This is another back-transcription, recreating the putative original version of the well-known Harpsichord Concerto in F minor, which Bach had transposed down a tone to fit the keyboards compass. The right-hand harpsichord part in the outer movements, which includes passages that seem tailored to open strings and (in the finale) chords suggestive of double stopping, hints strongly at a violin origin. Yet it has been plausibly argued that the Largos dreamy cantilena over pizzicato stringsa Bachian popular hit to rival the Air from the third Orchestral Suitederives from a lost Oboe Concerto in D minor. That the oboe original was less lavishly ornamented than the harpsichord transcription can be gauged from Bachs reuse of the movement as the Sinfonia to Cantata No 156, Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe (I stand with one foot in the grave). In the reconstruction heard on this recording, the violin emulates the discreet ornamentation of the oboe version.

Despite the seriousness associated with the minor key, the compact outer movements are lighter in spirit and thinner in scoring than those in Bachs other concertos. With its charming echo effects and volleys of graceful triplets, the first movement shows the Leipzig Kantor at his most suavely galant. The finale is another of Bachs catchy gigues, given a piquant rhythmic kick by the syncopations in the main theme.

Longest, most imposing and most virtuosic of these works is the Concerto in D minor, BWV1052, whose lost violin original probably (that word again) dates from Bachs Cöthen years or even earlier. In the composers keyboard transcription it was taken up in the nineteenth century by, inter alia, Mendelssohn and by Brahms, who wrote a gloriously anachronistic cadenza for it. The cut of the keyboard part often betrays its violin origins, not least in the outer movements rapid cross-string writing and figuration exploiting the resonance of open strings. Not surprisingly, Bach thought highly of the concerto, adapting the first and second movements for Cantata No 146, Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen (We must suffer much tribulation to enter the kingdom of God), and the finale in the (partly lost) Cantata No 188, Ich habe meine Zuversicht (I have my assurance).

The concertos austere grandeur is enhanced by an almost continual emphasis on the minor mode. The first movements brusque, angular six-bar orchestral ritornello, in stark unison throughout, sets the tone. Contrapuntally elaborated on its later appearances, the ritornello alternates with solo episodes that combine development of motifs from the ritornello and fevered, toccata-like violin figuration. Virtuosity reaches its apogee near the end, in an unaccompanied quasi-cadenza over repeated pedal notes.

The noble G minor Adagio likewise opens with a unison ritornello, which then recurs as a ground bass in different keys beneath the soloists sorrowful, richly embellished cantilena. The whole movement sounds like an idealized aria for a grieving operatic heroine, in eloquent dialogue with orchestral violins and violas. (In Cantata No 146 Bach added an independent four-part chorus to the instrumental lines.) A precipitate downward scale launches the torrential finale, a movement that lives on fierce contrapuntal energy (the main theme is fashioned so that violin and bass lines can be inverted) and figuration both brilliant and dramatic, sounding even more idiomatic on the violin than on the harpsichord. Bach crowns the concerto with a burst of cadenza-like virtuosity to rival that in the first movement: a thrilling climax to a work claimed by Tovey as the greatest and most difficult violin concerto before the time of Beethoven.

Richard Wigmore © 2015