Concerto in A minor for four harpsichords (BWV 1065)

A Moment of Vivaldi! This week, we look at Bach's transcription of Vivaldi's concerto for 4 violins. The crisp and elegant style of Vivaldi gets magnified by Bach here.  4 violins become 4 harpsichords, and the snapping and clicking of the harpsichord strings become a delightful metaphor for the clockwork precision of the composition and the structure of the music.  We quote a character from a Douglas Adams novel, who, along with us, sits down to listen to a piece by Vivaldi and marvels that something could be so sublime and yet so mechanical at the same time.  Also, listener Will gives us a great moment of violin shredding, and Alex chooses his favorite moment of dissonance from the end of the second movement, where a multiple trill on a diminished chord gives us one of the crunchiest sounds in all of baroque music.

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Performance of BWV 1065 by Netherlands Bach Society

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (book quoted in this episode)