stylistic:style_transfer, quality:correction
In later years

It is often asserted that Christian Ludwig lacked the musicians in his Berlin ensemble to perform the concertos, and that the score was left unused in the Margrave's library until his death in 1734, but Boyd argues that the evidence does not necessarily support these assertions, and that "it seems unlikely that Bach would have sent him six concertos totally unsuitable for his musicians to play." Nevertheless, the concertos were not included by name in the library inventory after Christian Ludwig's death, and it is uncertain who they went to. The next owner we have a record of was Bach's own pupil Johann Kirnberger, who left the collection to Princess Anna Amalia on his death, who subsequently bequeathed it to the Joachimsthal Gymnasium from which it was transferred to the Royal Library of Berlin (now the Berlin State Library) in 1914. The manuscript was nearly lost during World War II, while being transported for safekeeping to Prussia by train in the care of a librarian – the train came under aerial bombardment, and the librarian escaped from the train to a nearby forest, with the scores hidden under his coat. As of 2023 the manuscript remains in the Berlin State Library.

After Bach's death only the fifth concerto received any widespread attention, probably due to the fashion for keyboard concertos; the rest seem to have been forgotten. The pieces were rediscovered by Siegfried Dehn, who found them in Princess Amalia's library in 1849 and had them published for the first time the following year, the centenary of Bach's death. However, this publication appears not to have spurred large numbers of performances, and those that did occur tended to adapt the instrumentation to the forces available to modern orchestras. The concertos' current place in the canon is instead owed to the advent of recording technology; the first recording of the complete set was made in 1936, directed by Adolf Busch, and the revival of interest in historically informed performance made the pieces popular for further recordings on period instruments. They have also been performed as chamber music, with one instrument per part, especially by groups using "baroque instruments" and historically informed techniques and practice. There is also an arrangement for four-hand piano duet by composer Max Reger.

A Karl Richter recording of Concerto No. 2 was sent into space in 1977 on the Voyager Golden Record.

In 2001, the piece came in at number 22 in the Classic 100 Original (ABC) listing. In 2007, all six of the concertos appeared on the Classic 100 Concerto (ABC) listing.