A musical afternoon with the Bach family
It is well known that the great Bach family met regularly to make music in larger and smaller family circles.
This morning, we will give you an insight into what a musical afternoon at the Bachs' house might have looked or sounded like. The focus will be on the second orchestral suite in B minor for flute, strings and continuo (BWV 1067). It is not certain exactly when it was composed. Bach is said to have performed it around 1740 at the Zimmermann coffee house in Leipzig, among other places, but the work will be older.
Contemporary research suspects an earlier version in a minor. There are good reasons to believe that the first version was written only for strings; the solo Bourrée II was probably not in it then, and the remarkably few other solo passages were probably entrusted to the first violin.
The suite is ideally suited to a chamber music performance and contains some contrapuntal subtleties. The final movement of the overture, for instance, is an implied multiple canon of all voices. In several movements, there are canons between the upper voice and the bass; in the Sarabande, there is even a strict fifths canon.
You will also hear the Sonata in G for violin and continuo (BWV 1021), excerpts from the Sonata in g minor for violin without bass (BWV 1001) and the first Cello Suite (BWV 1007), and a Sonata for violoncello and harpsichord by Bach's son Johann Christoph Friedrich, who spent most of his career at the court in Bückeburg.
Since coffee is, of course, not to be missed, we invite you to enjoy it during the concert.
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