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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Concerto for 3 Violins in D Major, BWV 1064r
Allegro-Adagio-Allegro
Tomà Iliev • Jude Ziliak • David Wilson, solo violins
Cynthia Keiko Black, violin • Gail Hernández Rosa, violin • Ramón Negrón Pérez, viola • William Skeen, violoncello • Steven Lehning, violone • Corey Jamason, harpsichord
00:00 Opening
00:18 I-Allegro
06:45 II-Adagio
12:06 III-Allegro
16:44 Credits
Eddie Frank, video • Chris Landen, audio
American Bach Soloists • Jeffrey Thomas, Artistic Director
Filmed in May 2021 in the Great Hall at the Castello di Amorosa (Calistoga, California).
How we made the video: americanbach.org/Videos-Backs...
Many of Bach's concertos for solo violin, though now lost in their original forms, were transcribed or “recycled” as harpsichord concertos when Bach would assume the directorship of Leipzig’s Collegium Musicum in 1729. The Collegium Musicum, a semi-professional musical performance society that Telemann had founded in 1702, was one of two such societies in Leipzig: the other had been founded in 1708 and was directed during Bach’s time in Leipzig by J.G. Görner, the University Church music director and Thomaskirche organist with whom Bach was not on the best of terms. Bach’s Collegium Musicum was supported by university students and some professional musicians, almost certainly including his older sons. This ensemble could be adapted to the performance of anything secular from chamber music to small orchestral/choral works, and was a fixture of the lively middle-class musical life in Leipzig. Meetings of the ensemble were held on Friday evenings at Gottfried Zimmermann’s coffee house (or sometimes al fresco in summer). In addition to these regular concerts, which were open to the public, the Collegium also performed from time to time for royal or academic occasions. We know that Bach composed several pieces for such events, but unfortunately there is no known record of the music played at the Collegium’s ordinary concerts. Nevertheless, we believe that Bach arranged his many harpsichord concertos for these evenings from pre-existing concertos for other solo instruments, most often violins. We believe further that, sometime around 1735, Bach and his sons performed a concerto for three harpsichords in C major (BWV 1064) at Zimmermann’s Coffee House.
This concerto, like so many others that were performed in Leipzig around that time, was probably the result of another successful transcription by Bach of a pre-existing work for violins. Accordingly, the lost and likely original concerto has been reconstructed, or reverse-engineered, into the form we present tonight. Transposed to D major, a more likely and more idiomatic key for a triple violin concerto, the work opens with a clearly intelligible ritornello. The accompanying orchestral musicians play nearly all the time (in all three movements), and “teamwork” seems to be the subtext. The soloists enter always in order, either first-second-third, or third-second-first. The central movement presents a fuller spectrum of sound than the first, especially when the ripienists occasionally play in the lower parts of their instruments’ ranges. The third movement gives the chance for all the soloists, in succession from third to second to first, to demonstrate their prowess, in a commendably polite contest. Only the first violinist is given the opportunity to play in a more or less improvisational style in a pseudo-cadenza that brings us to the final ritornello and the concerto’s close.
© 2021, American Bach Soloists
American Bach Soloists (ABS) are leading performers in the field of Baroque music, dedicated to historically informed performances of Bach and his contemporaries. ABS provides meaningful, memorable, and valuable musical experiences for our audiences through inspiring performances and recordings, and it supports the preservation of early music through educational programs for students and emerging professionals. Under the leadership of co-founder and Music Director Jeffrey Thomas, the ensemble has achieved its vision of assembling the world’s finest vocalists and period-instrument performers to bring this brilliant music to life.
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