BACH CONCERTO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 15

BACH CONCERTO

WV Thursday of this week, May 31, the National Orchestra, under its guest conductor, Sir Bernard Heinze, will present two public concerts. Included in the Thursday’s programme is Bach's Concerto for Clavier and Strings in D Minor, in which the soloist is the well-known Christchurch pianist, Ernest Jennet. Here BESSIE POLLARD discusses this work in outline. ACH’S keyboard concertos were mostly all adaptations of his violin concertos, but when he transcribed he usually developed, rewriting the work to suit the new medium by changing the key, enlarging the\ harmonic construction, and often revising the melodic line to make it more suitable for the keyboard. The D Minor Clavier Concerto is said to exist in other forms-for example, as a violin concerto that, after it came into the possession of Bach’s eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, was lost. Bach also used the first movement (with solo part allotted to the organ, and with added oboe parts) as the Sinfonia to the Church Cantata No. 146, "Wir Mussen Durch Viel Trubsal," while the slow movement, with added independent voice parts, forms the basis of one of the choruses from the same Cantata. Each of the three movements of the D Minor Concerto enshrines a characteristic device of Bach’s-the employment of a prominent motif, or full theme, which is introduced frequently, and freely developed, so that the contrasting elements of the movement are welded together into a striking unity. In the first movement-allegro-this connecting link is the very opening theme, a bold, unison tutti (below)-

At bar seven, the soloist enters with a flourish, accompanied by a slurred two-note figure from violins and a reiterated pedal "D" from violas-

As the movement progresses there: are passages for the soloist, containing much use of arpeggio figures, and even some cadenzas which clearly amend the procedure of modern concertos. In the slow movement-adagio-the connecting link is again the opening, theme (below) where the orchestra plays_a sort of ground bass melody that is heard through most of the movement, while over it (from the 13th bar onwards) the soloist builds a baroque musical structure- ee ,

The Finale-allegro-similarly is based on the "motto" theme heard at the beginning of the movement (below). At the third bar I have sketched in the rising counter-melody which appears in the lower strings-

When the solo instrument takes over the statement of the main theme (below) Bach embellishes it with a waving three-note motif derived from the bar preceding the cadential close. The motif marked in brackets below is used extensively in the development of the movement, although all the tutii entries begin with the original descending scale motif-