Concerto in D minor BWV 1052R

Bach’s ever-popular harpsichord concerto in D minor (BWV 1052) has been recognized for nearly 150 years to be a transcription of a much earlier violin concerto in the same key, and reconstructions of that lost original version in published editions and modern recordings have been very numerous. However, existing reconstructions for violin have all proved unsatisfactory from either a musicological standpoint or a violinistic one – or both simultaneously. Doubts have even been expressed recently by leading scholars that the violin was ever the original solo instrument.

This new reconstruction by Fabrizio Ammetto, known within the field of late baroque music equally as a violinist and a scholar, reaffirms convincingly the concerto’s status as a violin concerto by close examination and comparison of the five surviving sources containing its material in whole or part and careful attention towards the idiomatic shaping of the solo violin part, which includes full-length versions of the cadenzas for the outer movements. The score includes editorially added bass figures for those who prefer to improvise a keyboard realization, and the separate parts include one for Cembalo containing a specimen written-out realization.