The earliest of C.P.E. Bach's three cello concertos, like its companions, began as a keyboard work and ended up as a flute concerto in the same key (Wq 166, H. 431). It sandwiches an Andante between two movements marked Allegro assai. The first movement seems very much a product of the just-ending Baroque era, with its ritornello of near-monotonous triadic arpeggios. The music's dramatic, stormy character, though, with sudden pauses punctuating the outbursts, is pure C.P.E. Bach. The cellist's material provides further contrast, its mournful, cantabile nature at odds with the jagged, nervous material the orchestra keeps bringing back. The cello does eventually develop churning material of its own (sometimes backed by the arresting effect of the orchestra playing its five-note motto pizzicato), but more often than not the soloist maintains a defiantly singing line, even in its ruminative cadenza near the end. The Andante is much more relaxed, emerging from a gentle, singing theme established by the orchestra and then taken up by the cello. The movement teases at this long-lined, wide-ranging material at length, the music occasionally dipping back into the minor mode to allow the soloist some comparatively ardent passages. The cadenza preceding the final pages is extremely brief, allowing the cello to exit on a trill. The concluding Allegro assai grimly marches through a linked series of short, stern phrases, each of which the soloist and orchestra proceed to individually explore, with the cello sometimes engaging in rapid passagework. This is no death march; however, at times, the little flourish of the opening phrases sounds flirtatious. The overall effect, though, is of striding determination.

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