Cologne Chamber Orchestra - Harpsichord Concertos II [CD]

The Concerto in D minor BWV 1063 for three harpsichords is an extremely individual work. The history of it's composition is completely obscure, and there are extremely divergent hypotheses about possible works on which it could be based. According to an older tradition, which can possibly be traced back to Bach's school or family circles, Bach is said to have written the work for himself and his two eldest sons, in order to give them the opportunity "to train themselves in all manner of performance". This would suggest a date of composition around 1730, i.e. immediately before Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach left their father's home. This information does not however, explain the strange heterogeneity of the composition and the way the solo instrument is treated differently in all three movements, which leads one to think of a pastiche made up of works of different origins, as is the case with the Triple Concerto BWV 1044. Bach displays in this work his sovereign mastery and at the same time free treatment of the concerto form perfected by Vivaldi, which expresses itself in the first movement in a motivically dense development which in several places breaks down the boundaries between solo episode and ritornello; at the entry of the last ritornello, the climax of the movement the ritornello themes and the virtuoso figurations of the first harpsichord are interwoven with one another. The second movement, uniquely in Bach's concerto ouvre; is a simple binary dance movement with varied recapitulations, whereas the final movement displays the more frequently found form of the concerto fugue.