Italian Concerto in F Major

Rutted roads and highway robbers did not deter many of the 18th century’s finest musicians from travelling throughout Europe. They often took with them manuscripts of compositions that displayed the latest fashions from Italy and France. While serving the dukes of Saxe-Weimar in the 1710s, Bach made copies of works by contemporary French and Italian composers and absorbed elements of their styles into his personal musical language. The Italian instrumental concerto, which exploited the contrasts between a soloist or solo group and a larger ensemble, left a lasting mark on Bach’s work. His Weimar transcriptions of concertos by Vivaldi, Albinoni and the Marcello brothers set the foundations for his own concertos. The Italian Concerto, or the Concerto nach Italienischem Gusto (Concerto after the Italian Taste), was first published in 1735 as part of the second volume of Bach’s Clavier-Übung or “Keyboard Exercises”, presented together with an “Ouverture in the French Style”. It stands as Bach’s only surviving concerto for solo keyboard and a bold advertisement of his stylistic synthesis and fresh invention. The three-movement work was written for a two-manual harpsichord, with episodes for the solo or concertino group assigned to the upper keyboard and the tutti or ripieno parts played by both hands on the lower keyboard. The contrast between the two groups is at its clearest in the exquisite central “Andante”, in which the right hand projects an elaborate melody, comparable to a violin solo in a conventional concerto, above the left hand’s light chordal accompaniment; the outer movements, meanwhile, revel in the interplay of solo passages and recurring tutti music.