Bach - Concerto in D minor Marcello BWV 974 - Ayrton | Netherlands Bach Society

Bach arranged quite a lot of music by his Italian contemporaries. The concerto in D minor, originally written for oboe and strings by Alessandro Marcello (1673-1747), is one such arrangement. Alessandro was the elder brother of Benedetto, who was also a composer. The two brothers came from a noble Venetian family. Alessandro was an all-rounder. He drew and painted, made globes, wrote poems and played several instruments. Following a visit to Italy in 1729, the French philosopher Montesquieu wrote disparagingly that Marcello was “a kind of madman” and “a jack-of-all-trades for the semi-talented”. Talented or not, Marcello’s oboe concerto was also in circulation in Northern Europe. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar may have taken a manuscript of the work back to Weimar from the Low Countries in 1713. Bach’s keyboard arrangement, here performed by Patrick Ayrton for All of Bach, turns a concerto that was already modest in stature into real living room music. But, as Ayrton says, Bach’s approach to these arrangements was always to make them more interesting than the original. Nevertheless, the Italian character remains unmistakeable, making it one of the numerous examples of Italian-German symbiosis in Bach’s work. Back home in France, Ayrton also stands up for Marcello, in defiance of Montesquieu. Recorded for the project All of Bach on 16th April 2018 at Culles-les-Roches, France. If you want to help us complete All of Bach, please subscribe to our channel and consider donating For the interview with harpsichordist Patrick Ayrton on Concerto in D minor ’Marcello’ BWV 974 go to For more information on BWV 974 and this production go to All of Bach is a project of the Netherlands Bach Society / Nederlandse Bachvereniging, offering high-quality film recordings of the works by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by the Netherlands Bach Society and its guest musicians. Visit our free online treasury for more videos and background material For concert dates and further information go to Patrick Ayrton, harpsichord 0:00 Andante 3:30 Adagio 7:04 Presto