Angela Hewitt in a 2007 performance of the first movement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Italian Concerto, BWV 971, in F Major. This work, titled in Deutsch as Concerto nach Italienischem Gusto or "Concerto According To The Italian Taste", was published in 1735 as part of Bach's second folio of keyboard exercises (Clavier-Übung).
During Bach's time, the Italianate Concerto form, a style of musical composition having three distinct movements (an up-tempo opening movement, followed by a slower movement, with another up-tempo concluding movement), was becoming popular throughout Europe. Concerto of course means "concert", and many of J. S. Bach's most well known works are performance pieces in the Italian concerto style, most often written for solo instrument with orchestral, or chamber ensemble accompaniment. When Bach was putting together a collection of exercises for student keyboardists, in particular those who were working to master the harpsichord, he included in his second Clavier-Übung, pieces written in two of the popular musical forms of the day: a French style Ouverture, and a solo Italianate concerto.
This composition was never meant to be a anything other than a young student's skill building exercise, in a style familiar to most budding keyboardists of the mid 18th century. But it's a testament to Bach's musical genius that almost three hundred years later, a harmonically intricate, and in the right hands, musically captivating work of art, originally published as a learning activity written in a Concerto form, has become a solo keyboard concert piece in its own right, which we can all enjoy listening to whether performed by a young student, or an accomplished master of the keyboard.
One of the great interpreters of our own time of the keyboard works of J. S. Bach, pianist Angela Hewitt's masterful performance of the Italian Concerto is certainly nothing short of musically captivating. The first movement above; the second, Andante, movement and the third, Presto, below: