Keyboard Concerto No. 4 in A Major

The beautiful singing style of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in A Major (BWV 1055) has long suggested that the work may have started life as a concerto for the rich, low-voiced oboe d’amore. But the dominance of the harpsichord over the orchestra could also point to its origins in a work for solo keyboard alone (for the opening “Allegro” at least). Whatever the case, Bach makes considerable capital from contrasting the springy energy of the orchestra with the lyrical appeal of the soloist’s part. The central “Larghetto” is the emotional heart of the piece: a gently rocking lament, dominated by the continuous, rippling flow of the harpsichord, backed by the almost sobbing chords of the strings. If there’s less argumentative drama between the soloist and orchestra than in some of the other harpsichord concertos, there’s certainly no lack of virtuosity. Bach rounds off the concerto with a dashing minuet (“Allegro”) which manages to be simultaneously dexterous and exquisitely graceful. About J.S. Bach's Keyboard Concertos The keyboard concerto arrived late in the Baroque. Its two pioneers—Bach and Handel—took up the form independently, nearly simultaneously and almost accidentally. Bach first experimented in his Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, and during the 1730s he went on to create 13 concertos for one, two, three and four harpsichords (BWV 1052-65), probably for his student-based music society, which gave concerts at Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig. Bach didn’t so much compose these concertos as arrange them, taking earlier concertos for the violin and oboe and reworking them for the harpsichord. Bach himself may have played his seven solo concertos, while contemporary accounts tell us that the multiple harpsichord concertos relied on his elder sons and pupils as soloists.