Keyboard Concerto No. 7 in G Minor

All seven of Bach’s solo keyboard concertos are arrangements of earlier concertos for violin or oboe, most of which are lost. But the original version of his Harpsichord Concerto in G minor, BWV 1058 still survives as the Violin Concerto in A minor. This was probably the first concerto that Bach arranged, and comparing the two works, we can see that Bach’s process of transformation was very literal. The orchestral writing didn’t change, while the new keyboard part was created simply by assigning the solo violin line to the right hand and the orchestral bass line to the left; Bach also had to adapt the violinistic writing into something better suited to a harpsichordist’s fingers. The first movement is one of Bach’s most concentrated: almost everything is cleverly derived from the opening orchestral passage. In the following “Andante”, Bach draws out a sinuous melody over a pithy repeated theme in the bass. Finally, the concerto leaves us out of breath with a galloping, tuneful gigue (“Allegro assai”), and ever-increasing virtuosity from the harpsichord. 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.