Harpsichord Concerto D Minor Bwv 1052A

In early 1729 Bach became director of the so-called »Scottish Collegium Musician« a music organization of students and local citizens. The remarkable results of this undertaking are the concertos for harpsichord. Today it isalmost certain that practically all of these concertos were transcribed from concertos for melody instruments (mostly violin or oboe).

When Johann Sebastian Bach created his six-part corpus of harpsichord concertos in 1738(BWV 1052-1057) he gave pride of place to the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052. It has long been thought, for good reasons, that this piece was based on a lost violin concerto in the same key that he had already transcribed ontwoprevious occasions.

The second ‘forerunner’ of BWV 1052 is the present harpsichord concerto. It was first published by Wilhelm Rust in volume 17 of the old Bach Society Gesamtausgabe (1869) and given the number BWV 1052ain the Schmieder catalogue. Rust felt that Johann Sebastian Bach himself wrote out the principal source, a set of orchestral parts preserved in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek under the shelf mark Mus. ms. St 350, and thereforetreated the piece as an authentic early version of BWV 1052. Today, however, we know that the scribe was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who is generally also regarded as the work’s author.