J.S. Bach - Harpsichord Concerto No. 4, BWV 1055 (1738)

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations as well as for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

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Harpsichord Concerto No. 4 in A major, BWV 1055 (1738)
Bach's arrangement of a lost concerto for oboe d'amore (BWV 1055R)

I. Allegro (0:00)
II. Larghetto (4:34)
III. Allegro ma non tanto (9:17)

Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord and the Leonhardt Consort

While scholars agree that the concerto BWV 1055 is based on a lost original, different theories have been proposed for the instrument Bach used in that original. That it was an oboe d'amore was proposed in 1936 by Donald Tovey, in 1957 by Ulrich Siegele, in 1975 by Wilfried Fischer, and in 2008 by Pieter Dirksen.[36] Alternatively, Wilhelm Mohr argued in 1972 that the original was a concerto for viola d'amore. Most recently, however, in 2015 musicologist Peter Wollny (the director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig) argued that the "entire first movement" may instead "originate as a composition for unaccompanied keyboard instrument," since the movement "is conceived on the basis of the harpsichord as solo instrument, to such an extent that the strings are not even permitted to deploy a ritornello theme of their own, but from the first bar onwards assume their role as accompanists and thus step into the background to enable the solo part to develop unhindered; in the case of a melody instrument like the oboe such a design would be unthinkable."

Wollny notes that whatever the origins, the final work is the only Bach Harpsichord Concerto for which "a complete original set of parts has survived"; included is a "fully figured continuo part," which scholars agree was for a second harpsichord. Wollny sees the second movement as a siciliana and the finale as having the "gait of a rapid minuet."