Concerti a Cembalo obligato BWV 1052-1059

Music for a Leipzig “coffee house” and for other venues – Johann Sebastian Bach composed not only for the nobility and the church, but also for bourgeois musical culture. Among these works are the harpsichord concertos. They are noted down in a manuscript that is a unique and probably the most important document for the instrumental repertoire of the Leipzig “Collegium Musicum”. Bach arranged his concerto movements in such a way that the harpsichord is given a solo part that exploits the instrument’s “clavieristic” possibilities to the full. These works thus fix a decisive moment in the early history of the piano concerto genre which received significant impulses from Bach and his circle of students. The autograph offers revealing insights into the composer’s working methods, elucidated by Christoph Wolff in an accompanying essay. Martina Rebmann describes the genesis of the Bach collection at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, which holds the autograph. The facsimile in high-quality four-colour printing reproduces the extensive score in its original size; BWV and bar numbers on every page facilitate its use.