Keyboard Concerto No. 2 in E Major

Bach probably composed his seven solo harpsichord concertos for his student-based music society which gave concerts at Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig during the 1730s. He didn’t so much compose these works as arrange them, taking earlier concertos he’d written for the violin and oboe and reworking them for the harpsichord. Compared with the intensity of the D minor Concerto, BWV 1052, the Harpsichord Concerto in E major, BWV 1053 is positively overflowing with cheerful good humour. The concerto on which Bach based it (now lost) was clearly one of his favourites because he frequently returned to it—reworking all three movements to add festive grandeur to several of his church cantatas. The first movement (like several of the Brandenburg Concertos) is cast as an oversized da capo aria—ABA—in which the opening section returns triumphantly at the end. The soloist’s part is intricately interwoven into the fabric of the orchestral accompaniment, richer in Bach’s concertos than those of his contemporaries, with each instrument a partner in dialogue with the harpsichord. In the gently rocking slow movement (“Siciliano”) Bach spins out a richly ornamented melody against the spare, whispering strings. The final “Allegro” returns to the symmetrical pattern of the first movement, but with an irrepressible spring in its step. 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.