Gidon Kremer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Sonatas For Violin Solo (ecm Ns)(2022)

Violinists will sometimes delay recording Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin until they feel they have mastered the music and even let it become second nature to them. Not so Thomas Zehetmair, who, with guidance from his mentor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, first recorded the Sei Solo in 1982 for Teldec, then waited almost four decades before revisiting them for ECM New Series. This time span has permitted Zehetmair sufficient space to reevaluate Bach's masterpiece and to present the music with a mature appreciation of its contrapuntal intricacy and expressive depth.

Keith Jarrett & Michelle Makarski – Johann Sebastian Bach: Six Sonatas for Violin and Piano (2013) {2CD ECM New Series 2230/31}
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© 2013 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2230/31
Classical / Baroque / Chamber Music

Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett has recorded Bach before, on both piano and harpsichord. His interpretations are not jazz versions of Bach but are played straight. In this case you might say relatively straight, for Bach's sonatas for violin and keyboard, BWV 1014-1019, were written for a harpsichord and are generally played that way; somehow the ear is jarred more by the piano here than in Bach's solo keyboard music (which Jarrett has also recorded). Jarrett fans will find the evidence of his characteristic style not in rhythmic inflections toward jazz but in his way of sustaining notes, which is never excessive.

Gidon Kremer and Mario Brunello pay tribute to Beethoven by presenting two of his most famous quartets in a version for string orchestra played by Kremerata Baltica. The ensembles founder Gidon Kremer directs op.131 from the violin, while Mario Brunello conducts op. 135 and adds two contemporary pieces, one by Leo Ferre, the revolutionary, anarchic, inspired singer-songwriter and great lover of Beethoven: Muss es sein? Es muss sein! We perform this hymn to free music in a version arranged by Valter Sivilotti for cello, strings and percussion with Ferres original voice Note sconte means hidden notes in Venetian dialect.

Whereas most musicians seem to emphasize the music's reflective, nostalgic elements, Schneeberger and Cholette are more attuned to the abstract qualities in the music. On balance, I find that I still prefer the traditional approach, exemplified by Shannon and Fulkerson. To my ears, these artists manage to capture something wonderfully magical and mysterious that just eludes Schneeberger and Cholette. However, I should note that some critics have given high praise to this ECM disc. For example, it was awarded five stars in a BBC Music Magazine review. Another bonus: The ECM recording squeezes all four sonatas on a single disc.

Rarely has this music been played so naturally and with seeming effortlessness, with such a commanding knowledge of both formal proportions and idiomatic character. John Holloway, one of the most distinguished baroque violinists of our time, has researched and practiced these works for forty years. Specializing in the repertoire from the baroque period (1600-1750) he perceives Bach in the context of his predecessors and contemporaries - such as composers like Schmelzer, Biber, Veracini (whose works he has presented in highly praised recordings in recent years) rather than in the perspective of romantic and modern violin literature.

John Holloway and Davitt Moroney have set up a musically rewarding partnership in these brilliantly inventive works, furthermore adding to their programme the two lovely sonatas for violin and continuo long attributed to Bach, and justly so. In both of them they are joined by Susan Sheppard (continuo cello). For these sonatas Moroney has preferred a chamber organ to a harpsichord.

One of the most creative talents to emerge in the field of period performance over the last decade, Rachel Podger has established herself as a leading interpreter of the music of the Baroque and Classical periods.

Bach's first biographer, Forkel, noted that the violin writing of the Sonatas, BWV1014-19 required a master to play it. Bach, he said, knew all the possibilities of the instrument sparing it as little as he spared the harpsichord. Tie significant departure from baroque custom in these six sonatas is Bach's treatment of the harpsichord as an obbligato instrument, thereby making both players responsible for the thematic development. John Holloway and Davitt Moroney have set up a musically rewarding partnership in these brilliantly inventive works, furthermore adding to their programme the two lovely sonatas for violin and continuo long attributed to Bach, and justly so. In both of them they are joined by Susan Sheppard (continuo cello).

The East-West Chamber Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the Yuri Bashmet International Music Festival and is made up of concertmasters from leading orchestras and competition laureates. On this, their debut recording, they celebrate the centenary of Mieczysław Weinberg’s birth. Weinberg’s Chamber Symphonies reflect his creativity and the dramatic times in which he lived—the formal lucidity and directness of the First and the elegiac Third—both derived from string quartets composed in the shadow of the Second World War.