In his turn the conductor and first violin of the Freiburger Barockorchester engraved these emblematic pages for violin. On his instrument by the Milanese lutenist Paolo Antonio Testore (1690-1767), Gottfried von der Goltz tackles without any display this corpus for solo violin. He plays them in an authentic, personal and sober (a little too reserved?) way with a constant concern to put forward their rich architecture and polyphony always in a deep understanding of the writing. © Qobuz 2018  

Rachel Barton Pine has often performed the Sonatas and Partitas of Johann Sebastian Bach in recital, but her 2016 release on Avie is her first studio recording of this essential masterwork for violinists. Using a Baroque bow on a modernized 1742 Guarneri de Gesù violin, Pine plays the Sonatas and Partitas with crisp accentuation, transparent voicing, and a warm tone, much as she does in her concert performances. Her interpretation, which is influenced by period practices but not limited by them, offers clear counterpoint in the sonatas and buoyant dance rhythms in the partitas, and there is little scratchiness in her stopped chords to disrupt the smoothness and transparency of her elegant lines. Pine's depth of feeling and expressive insights into the music keep it from seeming like dry, technical exercises, yet there is none of the overly rhetorical Romantic approach here, either, so this reading does justice to Bach's likely intentions while communicating emotion in a subtle and tasteful manner. Highly recommended. © TiVo

Among the various Gramophone Awards of 2021, one that felt especially perfect and inevitable was violinist James Ehnes receiving “Artist of the Year”. Arguably the recent culmination of his Beethoven sonata cycle might have been enough to clinch it by itself. Yet Covid lockdown had also seen Ehnes go above and beyond in terms of what he put out from his living room. Because while much of what was put out from musicians’ houses sat firmly in the bracket of “of its moment” – informal and impromptu, broadcast via whatever mobile devices they happened to own – Ehnes did something rather larger-scale: purchasing a pair of Telefunken M60 microphones with TK61 omnidirectional capsules; setting them up in his large, wooden-floored, emptied-of-furniture living room; then, in the small hours of the night when finally the world reached a sound-proofed-studio-esque degree of silence, filming and recording the complete solo violin sonatas of J. S. Bach and Ysaÿe. The result was one of the few filmed lockdown performance series whose production and artistic values gave them the mileage to become enduring works of art whose only obvious audible connection to those strange lockdown days is perhaps a heightened sense of emotional intensity. Of especially weighted surrounding silence. This past summer Onyx released his superb Ysaÿe sonata readings. Now here’s the Bach, which is Ehnes’s second recording of the set, the first having been stamped on disc exactly twenty years earlier, in 2000 with Analekta. The first thing to say is that, while inevitably Ehnes’s readings have evolved over the years, they’re still recognisably from the same violinist. The generosity and impassioned drama is the same, with many of the changes being natural extensions of where he was going previously. One clear difference from the off is the subtly different recording acoustic: a slightly brighter and more immediate quality, which acts as the perfect canvas on which to display the sheer polish of his technique; and everywhere is the sense of a violinist at the height of his technical powers. Another overarching point is that there’s a slight increase in tempi across the set, although often this only amounts to a few seconds. Essentially, it’s as though Ehnes has now lived so long and deeply in these works that they’ve truly become his own voice, and with the most impassioned thoughts, the pace naturally picks up. Consequently the virtuosity is perhaps more evident, and enjoyably rather than distractingly so. Favourite moments. Well, I love the slight change to the emotional architecture of Sonata No. 1 in G minor’s Fuga. Previously, he began relatively big, as though we’d caught him mid-impassioned-conversation. Now it’s slightly more subdued, giving himself somewhere to go, which he quickly does. There’s also a slightly more delicately-voiced, lucid, wistful purity to his upper-register piano re-statement of the theme soon afterwards, and while these sound like small things – and really they are – it all adds up to an even more satisfying sense of architecture, and an even more developed and multi-nuanced emotional world. As for the famous D minor Chaconne, this appears via an as proudly non-period a reading as before in terms of his warm, rich, strong, soulful sound, but there’s also a bit more period-y air in some of the textures. Although both across the Chaconne’s show-stoppingly emotionally visceral yet supremely polished reading, and across the recording as a whole, cross-referencing quickly loses any attraction. For ultimately, these are performances of a power and beauty to simply lose yourself in, and be in the moment with. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Never one to shy away from challenges, Gidon Kremer often confronts them in his recordings of new or unusual music, yet his expression is often under the cover of novelty, or shared with other players. In this 2005 recording of Bach's sonatas and partitas for violin solo, however, the challenges are all internal, as Kremer faces the music nakedly and directly, without recourse to cohorts, gimmicks, clever arrangements, or anything other than the notes on the page. This is, of course, the greatest challenge any musician faces in playing Bach's solo works, and Kremer's interaction with the music is certainly exposed, if not always to the listener's delight. Kremer's tone and expression are chimerical, unpredictable, and sometimes rawly emphasized, and it is sometimes hard to tell if he has deliberately marked out all his dynamics and bowings -- as if parsing all those running sixteenth notes into motives and cells -- or if he has merely left such decisions to the moment's inspiration and spontaneously poured himself out in wave after wave of short, hiccuping phrases and exaggerated gestures. It takes something of an analytical mind to appreciate the finely worked details and studied nuances in his performances; otherwise, listeners who like smoother interpretations will feel its bumpy ride all the way and find his playing more annoying than appealing. ECM's sound quality is topnotch. © TiVo

How big is the violin Grumiaux's playing? Three feet? Six feet? A dozen feet? And how long is the bow Grumiaux's using? Four feet? Eight feet? Twenty feet? The answer is somewhere past beyond comprehension. In his 1960 recording of Bach's complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin, Grumiaux sounds like he's playing a violin roughly the size of a redwood with a bow roughly the size of all outdoors. Naturally, it takes enormous strength to wield such tools, and thankfully, Grumiaux has what it takes. No matter how superhuman Bach's demands, he never falters and always conquerors. Better yet, Grumiaux has the tremendous technique to handle such tools. His tone is majestic, his intonation is flawless, his phrasing is seamless, and his tempos are infectious. Best of all, Grumiaux has the breadth of heart, the depth of soul, and the height of spirit to interpret the works. From the black midnight of the D minor Partita's Chaconne to the bright daylight of the C major Sonata's Fugue, Grumiaux understands the stakes involved -- nothing less than damnation and redemption -- and is able to make great drama as well as great music out of it. Coupled with a pair of his 1967 recordings of Bach's accompanied sonatas performed with harpsichordist Egida Giordani Sartori, this set equals the greatest recordings ever made of any of the works and should be heard by anyone who loves the music. Philips' stereo sound was amazingly lifelike in its time, and it sounds even better in this expertly remastered 2006 reissue.© TiVo