Bach Sonatas Partitas Enes

Lovingly long, smooth and slowly drawn, the quietly subdued broken G minor chord with which Augustin Hadelich opens his Bach Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas is of a showstopping beauty and distinctiveness that's rarely heard so immediately and unmistakably in recordings of this Everest of the violin repertoire

The Konzertmeister of the Freiburger Barockorchester, Gottfried von der Goltz, finally records the masterpiece of the repertoire for solo violin: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas.

Throughout the last decades Giuliano Carmignola has earned his reputation as one of the top interpreters of Baroque music.

The Violin Sonatas and Partitas manuscript, which has fortunately survived, is dated 1720. The first page of the autograph carries the note “Libro Primo”; Bach’s Cello Suites BWV 1007-1012 may have been regarded as the “Libro Secondo”. A dedicatee is not known. Johann Sebastian Bach composed his Violin Sonatas and Partitas/ when he was employed as Kapellmeister in Köthen (1717-1723) and probably completed the cycle in 1720. There is hardly any other work in the entire violin literature with such significance. Bach set new standards in playing and composition; these works have lost none of their topicality and brilliance to this day.

(b. Prato, 9th december 1963), studied under the guidance of Sandro Materassi and graduated with full honour at Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini di Firenze. Later he studied with Stefan Gheorghiu and Ilja Grubert, taking the soloist degree at Rotterdams Conservatorium.

Multi award winning Canadian violinist James Ehnes returns to the greatest body of work for solo violin: Bach’s 6 Sonatas and Partitas.

As part of my project "follow me with bach" in 2021 I performed all sonatas and partitas for violin solo by J.S.Bach (BWV 1001-1006) in one day in Würzburg in the pilgrimage church "Käpelle", the "Hofkirche" of the Würzburg Residence but also in an unusual place, the Würzburg main station. The concert in the train station was one of the most intense experiences I have ever had as a musician. For in this unfamiliar environment, the ambient noise there and in the coming and going of the audience surprised by the music, Bach, fascinating for everyone, unfolded a completely different power than in the concert hall. Bach in the train station became train station in Bach.

“Pure and penetrating” was the violin playing of Johann Sebastian Bach according to the tradition of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel: “He fully understood the possibilities of all violin instruments. This is testified by his soli for violin and cello without bass. One of the greatest violinists once told me that he had seen nothing more perfect to become a good violinist and he could advise nothing better than the violin soli without bass mentioned above.” When Carl Philipp Emanuel addressed these words in a letter to the musicologist and early Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel in 1774, Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin were known to a still manageable, albeit growing circle of enthusiasts. Now these works are taken up on the present recording by Mikhail Pochekin.

Born in Paris on 5 November 1928 to a musical family of Moldovan Jewish immigrants, young Devy Erlih was soon recognized as an outstanding and talented prodigy. The family made it through the WWII German occupation and after the war Erlih continued his studies. He won the coveted Paris conservatoire Premier Prix and his career as violin soloist began. In 1955 Erlih won the International Long-Thibaud competition and subsequently toured throughout Europe, America and Japan.