Johann Christian Bach’s Op. 1 keyboard concertos were published in 1763: they are chamber works, played here, as they should be, with just two solo violins and a cello. They are slight pieces, neatly and gracefully formed but for the most part slender in musical content and often harmonically rather static. Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 5 are in the galant two-movement form, the second usually an extended minuet showing J. C. Bach’s characteristic warmth of invention. The first movements, which vary in tempo from Andante to Allegro, are embryonic versions of the concerto form familiar to us from Mozart. Nos. 4 and 6, which Bach called “Concerto o Sinfonia”, are quite different: each is in three movements, fast-slow-fast, the first of them not in concerto form at all but with the material shared equitably between strings and keyboard, and fully integrated, more like a true keyboard quartet. The opening Allegro of No. 4 is a particularly good piece, with a vitality and momentum to the music that is otherwise in short supply. And the slow movements of both these two have an expressive keyboard cantilena that is very appealing. The finale of No. 6 is a charming set of variations on God save the King.
The title page of the original edition specifies that these are concertos for the harpsichord, but I cannot help wondering whether they might not sound better on a fortepiano – the instrument was not unknown at this date, and the ideas would, I think, benefit from what the newer instrument, of which J. C. Bach was one of the pioneers in England, could offer. Anthony Halstead gives plain and direct performances, with many delicate touches of timing and articulation (in the second movement trio of No. 1, for example, with pizzicato accompaniment, or the opening movement of No. 5 – where the ideas themselves are really rather trivial). There is some quite brilliant playing in the first movement of No. 4. Here and there I wished Halstead were a shade more flexible in rhythm; it’s always worth thinking, in music of this kind, in terms of a vocal line, and I think he might sometimes have got more from the music had he reminded himself that Bach was an opera composer. However, the music is well represented, and I look forward to hearing future discs in this projected complete recording of J. C. Bach’s keyboard concertos.'