Multiple recordings of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin appear each year, but the market cannot be called overcrowded. These are supremely multifarious works that present as many faces as there are performers. The trend has been toward historically informed readings of one kind or another, but violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann offers something new, or one might say old. His modern violin readings hark back to the Bach readings of classical music's post-WWII golden age. Listen to the flash of the fourth-movement ...
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Multiple recordings of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin appear each year, but the market cannot be called overcrowded. These are supremely multifarious works that present as many faces as there are performers. The trend has been toward historically informed readings of one kind or another, but violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann offers something new, or one might say old. His modern violin readings hark back to the Bach readings of classical music's post-WWII golden age. Listen to the flash of the fourth-movement Allegro of the Violin Sonata No. 2 in A minor, BWV 1003, for an excerpt that typifies his approach. Zimmermann likens these works to "a mighty tree, which protects me and crushes me at the same time," a Romantic concept that points to his view of these works as essentially virtuosic, and indeed, virtuosic they are. However, Zimmermann has a touch of restraint that serves him well. Buyers who may want only one of what will be a pair of albums might choose this one, for it contains the...
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