Reconstruction of BWV 1052

Bach’s concerto in d-minor BWV 1052 is very well known, especially among harpsichordists. All the surviving sources of this piece are for keyboard instruments, but most musicologists assume that, like all Bach’s keyboard concertos, this piece must have originated as a violin concerto. Several reconstructions of this lost concerto have been made, varying from very personal and expressive arrangements by 19th century violinists to clean and academic (“correct”) but playable versions in the past decades.

When I included this piece in Ensemble Odyssee’s programme “In Freundschaft” (concerts from November 2018 to July 2020), it was clear that I had to make my own version in collaboration with harpsichordist and musicologist Andrea Friggi, even though this reconstruction might be very straightforward and not much different from other versions. It was a very interesting task! On the one hand I tried to stay true to academic standards, using the (presumably) earliest sources of the piece (which occurs as an organ solo in two different cantatas, BWV 146 and BVW 188) as the basis for the reconstruction. This was especially relevant for the orchestra parts and for the bass line, which have been considerably modified in Bach’s “final” version, BWV 1052.
For the solo violin part, the biggest questions were about the range and the way of playing the arpeggios. Blindly taking over the harpsichord figuration from BWV 1052 is doable on a violin, but not very idiomatic. It is also unhistorical since this version is, as mentioned above, much later than the early keyboard versions in the cantatas.
So here I took the liberty of thinking from a violinist’s perspective: keeping in mind that Bach was very inspired by Vivaldi’s violin concerti, I put some passages an octave higher, which is a natural range for a solo violin. I also figured out my own way to play the arpeggios (where the earliest source just says “arpeggi”) and a solution for the cadenza of the 3rd movement (the organ original unfortunately can’t be played on a violin for technical reasons), which is partly improvised. The beautiful ornaments of the second movements vary across the sources, but I use the earliest version as a basis and vary a bit with other versions and some improvisation.

I won’t be playing this piece anymore during the Odyssee tour, but I’m very happy to perform it once more at the Utrecht Early Music Festival 2021

Here’s a live recording of the 2nd and 3rd movement of a concert in Orgelpark, Amsterdam 13th October 2019.