Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas are a special item. To pack so much material the length and breadth of one violin 😉 is absolute magic. These pieces are the art of musical illusion. For me, number one in violin literature. For many years I have been looking for a performance that would satisfy me in terms of reading the score. There is a certain problem with violin music. Although the literature is powerful, few intelligent pieces have been created (don’t rant against me). Mozart’s concertos are unfortunately not at the level of their piano equivalent. Classical sonatas are already pieces for piano and violin, with all the consequences of that. Romanticism brings us monumental concert works – the problem is that they were written mainly by pianists, which makes them sometimes too trivial, if you do not have this sense of sound and possibilities. On the other hand, they are outrageously technically difficult 😉 . There is also a virtuoso trend, sparkling with technical intricacies but somewhat empty in content (at least Wieniawski tried to do a little more). Paganini’s most successful were the 24 caprices – play them all and you will know everything about the violin.
Finally the 20th century brings works with deepened emotionality – for example the Sonatas by Ysaÿe (of course, Bach deals the cards here) or the wonderful and bold concertos of Szymanowski, where the violin did not come from nowhere – it is a transmitter of a very distinct signal flowing from the world of sensuality (1st conc.) or directly from the mountains and valleys of Podhale (2nd conc.).
Glen Gould once said that composers can be divided into two categories: idealists and empiricists. He included Bach in the first group – his music is very easily transformable into other sets of instruments and does not lose any of its value (Kunst der Fuge!). At the opposite pole, there is an empiricist, e.g. Chopin, whose work is closely linked to the sound of the piano (woe betide all arrangers and instrumentationists ;-).
But due to the fact that Bach packed such a great resource of ingenuity into the solo violin, you need to know a large part of his work in order to understand the textural realities, polyphonic relationships, characterological specificity and the context of individual sound relationships.
Most of the performances of Sonatas and Partitas are a very skillful reading of the text, sometimes at senselessly dizzying tempos. it’s a lot but not enough. I listen to Bach performed by Augustin Hadelich – he is a poet of the violin, but I bet that he has never heard Bach’s cantatas or chorale preludes, for example, and he did not follow in the footsteps of Busoni and then Alfred Brendel (pianist), who got to it and „enchanted” it – I know what Brendel is playing about, in the case of Hadelich I know what he is playing and it is great, but I do not always know what he is talking about.
Can anyone cross that line where real narrative begins? Without studying Bach’s music, we won’t get anywhere. Another issue is performers playing ancient instruments. In-depth studies are part of their performance practice. Besides, the issues of instrument and bow construction solve certain problems themselves.
Bach is probably still waiting for a performer like Nigel Kennedy. Or maybe he himself will do it ?!