Bach Sonatas Partitas Enes

This new Ondine release by Danish-born recorder player Bolette Roed includes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach arranged for solo recorder. The works were arranged by Frans Brüggen (1934–2014), a famous Dutch recorder player and conductor, and one of the greatest exponents of the movement of historically informed performance practice. With the exception of his Partita BWV 1013, Bach wrote relatively few works for the recorder. However, composers like Bach and Vivaldi did themselves arrange many of their works for different instruments. From this point of view the work of arranging Bach’s solo cello and violin pieces for recorder is something that Bach himself could have done, had he been inspired by a talented recorder player at the time of composition.

The late Nathan Milstein’s 1975 stereo remake (DG mid-price) was his own preferred version of these pillars of the violin repertoire with which he had been so associated since his youth in Odessa. But his (broadly faster) mid-Fifties New York account, now remastered and restored by EMI, was a famous yardstick of its time – a grandly phrased, aristocratically structured, Romantically resonant statement to treasure beside Menuhin and Heifetz. These are epic virtuoso performances justifying Milstein’s view that with this music the performer could ‘bask in the most glamorous light’. Stylistically, purists will object to their expressive liberty and gesture. But few will be able to resist their artistry or intensity of delivery.

If you adn't noticed, Bach aficionados as a grumpy, contentious lot, and have been long before the period stylists assaulted the city gates with battering rams. In 1981 The Gramophone's reviewer greeted Gidon Kremer's first cycle of Bach's solo sonatas and partitas quite sourly, admiring the brilliant technique but deciding, overall, that the interpretation was wide of Bach's intentions. This strikes me as indefensible.

“Recording Bach’s complete Six Sonatas and Partitas has long been a dream of mine,” says Augustin Hadelich “They are formidable tests of technical ability and stamina, but also of musical imagination and expressive range – they never cease to provide challenges, hope, and joy.” For his interpretation, sensitive to historical practice, Hadelich chose to use a baroque bow. “It was a revelation,” he says. “It felt liberating … Passages of three- and four-note chords felt more fluid … The dance movements danced more and the slow movements sang more.”

Since the mid-1980s, Frank Peter Zimmermann has earned recognition as one of the leading violinists, admired not only for his technical skill and interpretive intelligence, but also for his versatility in a wide-ranging repertoire. His extensive discography spans from Bach concertos and Beethoven sonatas to works by composers such as Ligeti, Magnus Lindberg and Brett Dean. But during the four decades that Zimmermann has been making recordings, he has never previously recorded Bach’s Sei solo, the six sonatas and partitas for solo violin which form an absolute pinnacle in the repertoire for the instrument.

Writing about Bach's six sonatas and partitas for solo violin often focuses on the nature of the music: Are the pieces humanistic in tone? Do they reflect deep spiritual-numerological concerns? But the first thing the average listener is likely to notice about them is their sheer difficulty: their monumental quality comes in part from the fact that, as with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the musicians are struggling to re-create the music. That's partly the result of playing the music on a violin that wasn't built for it, and although there are plenty of recordings on a Baroque violin there are fewer players who have the means to deliver the music cleanly and confidently on one.

Tenenbaum is a very ardent musician whose Bach is irresistibly expressive, overwhelmingly passionate, and unreservedly loving. Tenenbaum has known the Sonatas & Partitas since she was a child and her interpretations are the results of her long and profound intimacy with the music. As in a great marriage, Tenenbaum knows everything there is to know about the Sonatas & Partitas and she knows the music has depths that reveal themselves only when the player surrenders to them.

The superb sound quality perfectly complements and supports Martzy's playing, which is thoroughly in the deep-and-involving end rather than the daring-and-scintillating end. There is not a sprung rhythm to be found. This is not Bach with a light touch. Vibrato is plentiful and beautiful. Movements end with "OK, I'm ending now!" ritardandos, which, however, are so well judged as to feel inevitable. Tone is gorgeous, technique assured to the point of transparency. The rhythms are 100% 1st-half-of-20th-century, and in that context are expressive and live.