JS Bach
Sonatas & Partitas, Vol. 2
Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin)
BIS BIS-2587 62:18 mins
Ever since their first publication in 1802 the idiomatic and exuberant polyphony of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin have challenged and absorbed performers, composers, commentators and audiences alike. Here is the second volume of Frank Peter Zimmermann’s complete recording of these wonderful pieces. He enters an arena generously populated by competing artists from Enescu, Menuhin, Martzy, Milstein and Grumiaux to much more recent accounts by Hilary Hahn, Viktoria Mullova, Julia Fischer, Christine Busch, Alina Ibraginova and others.
Among the immediately striking differences between then and now are today’s preferences for lighter bowing and brisker tempos, though performers of earlier generations often could surprise us with dazzling feats of articulate athleticism. Zimmermann’s virtuosity is beyond question as he breathtakingly demonstrates in the second Double of the B minor Partita. Occasionally I found myself wishing that he could find merit in more relaxed tempos and a more punctuated dialogue. The Tempo di Borea of the Partita lacked amiability and my ears detected one or two chordal infelicities. Such small details as these pale into relative insignificance as Zimmermann progresses majestically and with expressive sensibility through the C major Sonata with its elegiac opening Adagio and immense multi-layered Fuga, 354 bars in length. He manages its contrapuntal density with luminous linear clarity and a fluent understanding of rhetoric. A veritable tour-de-force which he follows with a limpidly bowed Largo and a crisply articulated Allegro assai, where he meets Bach’s merciless demands with seeming insouciance. This is masterly playing of music full of challenges and pitfalls, lucidly argued and often poetically felt. It is my misfortune not yet to have encountered Zimmermann’s first volume. Nicholas Anderson