Concerto for two harpsichords in C, BWV 1061

In the late 18th and 19th centuries the concerto came to be a form of musical drama, pitting the soloist against the orchestra in a battle for control of the tonal unfolding. Audiences and composers preferred the tension between the one and the many rather than the Baroque tradition of concerto grosso, in which a small group of soloists—note the plural—periodically emerge from and recede back into the full orchestra. Although some composers, e.g. Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms, continued to create concertos for multiple soloists, these are certainly the exception to the rule. Ensemble concertos were essentially a thing of the past by the time Mozart died.
For Bach, composing concertos between roughly 1720 and 1750, all options were still on the table. Bach wrote numerous concertos for one, two, three, and even more soloists, usually harpsichordists. BWV 1061, for two harpsichords and string orchestra, ranks among the more important of his fourteen works in the genre of keyboard concerto. Beginning perhaps in Weimar (1708-17) but taking deeper root during his tenures in Cöthen (1717-23) and Leipzig (1723-50), Bach absorbed the rising influence of the Italian instrumental concerto style and infused it with what mattered most to him: polyphony, motivic elaboration and technical brilliance. BWV 1061 may have been written as early as 1730—making it one of Bach’s first keyboard concertos—and is one of the very few that is not an arrangement of material either used in or intended for some other composition.
In the opening movement the solo parts mimic each other quite often, though Bach usually takes advantage of the added solo part to write close harmony. Longer solo passages are given to one keyboard at a time in a kind of “anything you can do…” imitation. Slow movements of large concertos nearly always feature a reduced texture, and the case of BWV 1061 is no exception. Bach goes a step further, however, and writes a poignant Adagio for just the two harpsichords. For the finale one might have guessed where Bach’s penchant would lead him: a massive fugue and fantasia with lengthy solo episodes and all manner of figuration and polyphony.

(c) Jason Stell