The key work in the next Oxford Bach Soloists concert on 22 October is Bach’s dazzling Violin Concerto in E Major with Bojan Čičić as the soloist. In this feature we find out a little more about the origins of the concerto…
‘Taut and elegant … Čičić makes even the high-wire showy stuff sing with a lyricism that is shapely, aerated and totally unforced.’ ****
The Guardian, June 2017
The concerto as we recognise it today for solo instrument and orchestra would have been a new phenomenon in the Baroque age. In fact, in the 17th century the term ‘concerto’ was used fairly generally for a sacred work for voices and orchestra. JS Bach himself used the title ‘concerto’ for many of the works that we know as cantatas.
By the Baroque period the Concerto Grosso – as popularised by Corelli and Handel with a group os soloists called the ‘concertante’ pitted against the accompaniment called the ‘ripieno’ – started to take hold with Bach’s famous Brandenburg Concertos being prime examples of this approach.
Later, the concerto approached its modern form with a single solo instrument playing with an orchestra – probably as a result of composers keen to create pieces in the popular Italian style of the time – all’italiana. The very word ‘concerto’ in Italian being a conjunction of conserere (to join together) and certamen (competition or fight). So this double-edged word couldn’t be a more appropriate description of what goes on in a concerto.
Flute Concerto
Bach was one of the chief exponents of this new approach to the concerto and although he wrote just two solo concertos and a ‘double’ concerto they are among the most popular and important instrumental works of the time.
Bach Concerto in E
Bach’s Violin Concerto in E major is a concerto for violin, strings and continuo in three movements. We think it was written early in Bach’s time in Weimar, when he was Konzertmeister at the Ducal Court. And it’s a real showpiece with Bach’s unmistakably memorable melodies and real sense of a ‘dual’ at times between soloist and orchestra.
Violin Concerto
with Bojan Čičić (violin)
JS BACH
Violin Concerto in E major BWV 1042
Birthday Cantata: Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn BWV 1127 (Everything with God and nothing without him)
Gott ist mein König BWV 71 (God is my King)
Sunday 22 October 3:15 pm
New College Chapel, Oxford