Piano Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052

The D minor concerto stands first in the autograph collection of harpsichord concertos Bach assembled around 1738, and it is the most severe of them. Like the others it is an arrangement: the model was almost certainly a violin concerto, now lost, and Bach had already used two of its movements as sinfonias in the cantatas BWV 146 and 188. Brahms made an edition of it, Busoni performed it, and it entered the piano repertoire long before period instruments were an issue. The opening unison statement is one of the starkest gestures in his orchestral music.