Symphonies Concertantes - Vol. 2

Abstract

This is one of the best of Johann Christian Bach's works in the genre, but until recently it was thought to have been lost or at best una¬vailable for the foreseeable futcre. The only known manuscript was a set of orchestral parts formerly in the Konigliche Hausbibliothek in Berlin. This was either destroyed during the Second World War or may just possibly have been taken away by the Soviet authorities. All we had were the incipits in Charles Sonford Terry's thematic catalogue and a description in Fritz Tutenberg's 1928 monograph on the or¬chestral music. It was quite obvious that Tuten-berg had made scores of those works which had existed only in parts in order to write his book and, when Richard Maunder was prepar¬ing the two volumes of Symphonies Concertan-les for the Collected Works, he made strenuous efforts to find them but without success. By then Tutenberg had died and no one, including sur¬viving members of his family, knew where his papers were. However, during a visit to the Staatliches Institut fur Musikforschung PreufJi-scher Kulturbesilz in Berlin in November 1996, I was lucky enough to come across most of his scores, including this concertante. In fact the manuscript was in two different hands.