It was for the occasion of the Covent Garden premiere of his great English oratorio Joshua on March 9, 1748, that George Frideric Handel composed—or perhaps, as we shall see, it is better to say arranged (the distinction between composing and arranging/transcribing was not nearly as clear, nor as important, to Baroque musicians as it is to modern ones)—the first of his three Concerti a due cori (Concertos for strings and two wind groups), the Concerto a due cori No. 1 in B flat major, HWV 332.

At that time, it was customary to bolster performances of even the largest compositions (especially oratorios, a form that the English public didn't quite yet know just what to do with) with a handful of instrumental pieces—at the premiere of the oratorio Alexander's Feast, for instance, no fewer than three of Handel's best-loved, large-scale instrumental works were first performed. Handel was an almost absurdly busy man, even during the 1740s and 1750s, when he was of an age when many composers have long been resting on their laurels, so to speak, and producing music so fast and at such volume is not at all easy. It was probably due more to this than to any other factor that so many of his instrumental pieces are in fact re-compositions, or sometimes transcriptions, of already existing works of music; sometimes, as is the case with the Concerti a due cori, the plundered works are Handel's own, but other times, as with the Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, HWV 76, he extracted themes and even whole passages from other composers' works, quite shamelessly it would seem to modern sensibilities. In the case of the six-movement Concerto a due cori No. 1 in B flat major, it was from a handful of his own operas and oratorios, among them the Messiah and Alexander Balus (which had not yet even been performed!) that Handel "borrowed"; the work is imbued with some of the same boisterous elan that characterizes the famous Music for the Royal Fireworks composed just a year or two later.

The Concerto is scored for the usual contingent of strings and continuo and two identical woodwind trios (each consisting of two oboes and a bassoon). Very often, as in the second, Allegro ma non troppo half of the two-part Overture, these six woodwind players take over music assigned to singers in the source pieces while the strings retain more of their original guise. Antiphonal effects and interplay between the three instrument groups abound throughout the score.

The first half of the opening overture is as good an example as any of Handel's delightfully aristocratic, even pompous (in the best sense of the word), style. The strings set the stage for the happy woodwind chirping of the Allegro second movement, but in the following, rigidly punctuated Largo it is the double reeds that get the first say. The fourth movement, A tempo ordinario, the winds are a chorus, in a very vocal sense, to the violins' running obbligato, while Alla breve moderato allows for some mock-fugal discussion amongst the instruments (here not so much divided along family lines). A warm Menuet draws things to a close; here the woodwinds occasionally get chances to strut their virtuoso stuff atop rich pedal points in the bass.

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