ExclusiveBach: Sonata in d minor for violin & harpsichord, BWV 1014 - III. Andante

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonata in d minor for violin & harpsichord, BWV 1014 - III. Andante. This beautiful piece was played by Paul Pitman. It has common licence (Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal), and is provided through musopen.org.

Bach at his most expressive
“I was stark staring mad to hear Sebastian’s sonatas”

This sonata for violin and harpsichord is the first in a set of six that Bach probably wrote during his years in Köthen. The slow opening section (Adagio) immediately shows Bach’s ambitions for the whole set. He reveals himself at his most expressive, and there is also room for virtuosity and complexity. For instance, after the melancholic introduction by the harpsichord, the violin enters in a lament with a long motionless note and proceeds to descend in a resigned garland of notes. A little later, the violin even becomes two-part, creating a five-part interaction between the two instruments.

It is precisely this combination of expressiveness, virtuosity and compositional mastery that explains why these sonatas have not fallen into oblivion. It is hard to ignore their musical quality. So it is no wonder that Bach kept the pieces in the repertoire in Leipzig. Later on, the sonatas were praised by Carl Philip Emmanuel, and that was just the beginning. The English music historian Charles Burney was “stark staring mad to hear Sebastian’s sonatas” at the start of the nineteenth century, when they were still being played in Germany and France as well.

This first sonata becomes considerably lighter in tone after the Adagio, with a dancy Allegro followed by a pleasant Andante, which is the only movement in a major key. In the closing section, Bach returns to B minor. Here, the violin begins with a note that is repeated five times, which sounds like a reference to the (same) note that started the Adagio – now not as a protracted lament, but chopped up and transformed into the springboard for an animated ending.
Source: bachvereniging.nl


The harpsichord's history stretches back to the early Renaissance, with the first instruments being built around the start of the fifteenth century. Between 1500 and 1750, the harpsichord, alongside the organ, was the most important keyboard instrument, with almost all major composers of the time writing works for it.

In my opinion, it’s difficult to play with great expressiveness on the harpsichord. The combination with the violin is simply wonderful.

The video was captured by Simone Schlegel in Switzerland and was edited by Wenjing Ma.




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