Spend an afternoon discovering some of Bach’s finest works for violin and chamber ensemble at Great Malvern Priory, featuring soloist and ESO leader Zoë Beyers.
Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos were effectively written as an instrumental job application for the German aristocracy, but they are unlikely to have been performed during his lifetime. They were discovered in the Brandenburg archives almost 100 years after Bach’s death, and they remain some of the finest examples of instrumental music of the baroque canon.
Bach was renowned as a virtuoso keyboard player, but he was also a highly skilled violinist and wrote a considerable number of masterpieces for the instrument, including eight sonatas for violin and harpsichord, and six works for unaccompanied violin. It also appears as a soloist in most of his Brandenburg Concertos, including Nos.4 and 5.
Bach’s love for both the harpsichord and violin is also evident in his violin concertos, which he later transcribed as harpsichord concertos (self-plagiarism is commonplace in composer circles). His Violin Concerto in E Major has remained one of his most popular and regularly performed to this day.
This is a free concert; however, tickets are limited, so please register using the link above. There will be a retiring collection at the end of the performance.