English 18th-Century Keyboard Concertos

'A delightful project' (The Times)

'Los amantes de le buena música encontraran en él elementos de indudable atractivo que sería una lástima dejar escapar' (CD Compact, Spain)

The keyboard concerto seems to have been invented independently by Handel and J S Bach. Handel wrote several experimental single-movement works for keyboard and orchestra in his youth (one of which begins this recording), but evidently only produced his first complete concerto in the early 1730s. Bach, meanwhile, had written his first experimental harpsichord concerto, Brandenburg No 5, around 1720. The two types of concerto, English and German, were quite different in conception, and remained so for much of the eighteenth century. German concertos were nearly always written for harpsichord and were modelled on the three-movement solo violin concertos of Vivaldi. Indeed, most of Bach's harpsichord concertos are simple adaptations of violin concertos, with the solo violin part transcribed more or less literally for the right hand of the keyboard.