Thursday music spot: Bach's Concerto in A minor BWV 593 (after Vivaldi)


JS Bach wrote a vast amount of superlative original music. But he also wrote a number of equally superb arrangements of music by Antonio Vivaldi, of which this is one. Vivaldi does not always get the credit he deserves.

Many years ago a distinguished professor of music wrote to the letters page of The Times that when he had been a student many years before that, he and his contemporaries were told that they would probably never hear Vivaldi's music performed but they should study him because of his influence on the work of other composers. He added that the memory of being told this always made him laugh when "yet another version of the Four Seasons comes out."

(What happened was that the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin decided to bring some of those Vivaldi works back from obscurity - and many other performers such as Nigel Kennedy have continued to play his music since.) 

This is an example of one of the works which that previous generation of music teachers were talking about.

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