Program
Bach: Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041
In 1723, after six years of working in Cöthen for a musically inclined prince, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) landed a prestigious church job in Leipzig. He was consumed at first by the enormous task of writing and rehearsing scared music for weekly services (as well as training the young choristers who would sing it), but over time he reclaimed enough leisure time to take on a side job leading the Collegium Musicum, a group of talented amateurs who performed at a local coffee house.
Bach reveled in the opportunity to present instrumental music again. He dusted off old scores from earlier jobs, and he also created a whole new body of compositions for large ensemble, including his two surviving violin concertos from around 1730.
Bach’s greatest inspiration for his violin concertos came from the Italian master of the form, Antonio Vivaldi, who perfected the ritornello structure in which a main theme returns multiple times to punctuate the form. The essential theme of the first movement of the Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor (BWV 1041) emphasizes pairs of rising notes, first making a bold leap up the interval of a fourth, and then returning for a narrow rise of a half-step.
So much of the emotional tension in the Andante slow movement occurs in the simple but profound bass line: its steady pulses, its hopeful ascents, and its many long silences that leave the soloist with only the fragile support of violins and violas. The rolling triplet pulse of the Allegro assai finale is akin to the gigue (or, as it called in the British isles, the jig), the dance style that ends many of Bach’s instrumental suites.
Bach: Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042
When Bach started his Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major (BWV 1042) with three chords and a pause, he was rehashing a stock opening that can be found in some two dozen of Vivaldi’s concertos. Where Bach excelled was in taking such simple material on unimaginable journeys through surprising keys and sophisticated counterpoint, all while making the most of the violin’s technical capabilities. The recognizable figure of a rising triad spread across three steady beats cascades from voice to voice and passes through a range of keys, making its most striking arrival in the ominous key of C-sharp minor. The journey to that contrasting key area proves even more significant when it turns out to be the home key of the Adagio, a poignant lament the concentrates the richest countermelodies in the lower strings. The Allegro assai finale adheres to the classic ritornello format, in which tutti statements return after each exploratory episode from the soloist.
Bach: Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor, BWV 1060R
Very few of the concertos that Bach composed during his years in Cöthen have survived, but some of the lost manuscripts can be reconstructed from the transcriptions he went on to make for Collegium Musicum concerts. Some old works found new life as harpsichord concertos for his talented sons to perform, and details within the keyboard parts hint at the original instruments Bach had in mind. Twentieth-century scholars followed those clues to recreate the Concerto in C Minor for Oboe and Violin (BWV 1060R), the presumed source for the existing Concerto for Two Keyboards in C Minor.
In the opening movement, the part Bach adapted for the second keyboard soloist undoubtedly originated on the violin, with figures divided between two adjacent strings, one moving melodically, the other holding constant. In the first solo part, the sustained tones suggest that the music was first conceived for oboe, given its ability to shape long, slow-moving phrases with the breath.
The gorgeous middle movement weaves the two solo voices in fluid counterpoint, supported by a gentle, rocking pulse of accompaniment. In the fast finale, the more virtuosic material goes to the violin soloist, who barrels through quick sextuplets under leaping figures from the oboe. As Bach’s son and onetime Collegium member C.P.E. Bach later wrote, “From his youth up to fairly old age, … [Bach] played the violin purely and with a penetrating tone and thus kept the orchestra in top form, much better than he could have from the harpsichord. He completely understood the possibilities of all stringed instruments.”
Telemann: Tafelmusik for Violin, Oboe, and Continuo
Georg Phillip Telemann (1681-1767) was the most respected German composer during his lifetime, influencing and overshadowing his slightly younger colleague, J. S. Bach. During Telemann’s years as a law student in Leipzig, he founded the Collegium Musicum that Bach eventually directed, and that hands-on practice with instrumental forms helped Telemann secure one of his first jobs with a duke in Eisenach, the same town where Bach had been born. Telemann eventually landed what was arguably the most prestigious post in all of Germany, directing music for the principal churches of Hamburg from 1721 until his death 46 years later.
Even amid the demands of writing all the required church music week after week (eventually adding up to some 1,500 cantatas), Telemann kept up his longtime interest in secular instrumental music. Under the banner of Tafelmusik or “table music”—meaning the kind of music fit to entertain guests while dining—Telemann collected three “productions” that each combined orchestral suites, concertos and chamber music into a readymade dinner party playlist. This ambitious publication from 1733 showed how Telemann capitalized on his international reputation to bolster his church salary, attracting subscribers from Germany and beyond who pre-ordered this Musique de table, as its original title page labeled it. French patrons accounted for 33 of the 206 subscriptions; another set bound for London was ordered by none other than Handel, who went on to quote and imitate Telemann’s music liberally.
Telemann’s musical approach was as international as his appeal. In true French style, he adopted the dance forms that had been popularized in the court of the dance-loving King Louis XIV, including the Siciliana style found in the outer largo sections of the movement the begins the Quartet in G Major (TWV 43:G2), a charming chamber music diversion within the larger first production of Tafelmusik. The second movement uses counterpoint to showcase in turn each of the featured instruments: flute, violin and oboe. The grave third movement serves as a short transition intoa lively finale based on the swaying pulse of the gigue.
