Bach - Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 80

Thomas Zehetmair
(ECM, two CDs)
Separate period instruments – and baroque bows – for the partitas and sonatas add drama to Zehetmair’s immense subtlety

Thomas Zehetmair was only 21 when he recorded Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas for the first time, in 1982, for Teldec. Though he performed them using a modern violin and bow, Zehetmair was then a member of Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s pioneering period instrument orchestra, and learning how to play this music on the kind of instrument that Bach would have known. That was the starting point for this new set, on which he uses different instruments and baroque bows for the two sets of pieces – one made in the South Tyrol in the late 17th century for the partitas, and his own Eberle violin dating from 1750 for the three sonatas.

With gut strings and playing without chin or shoulder rests, he is able to bring a huge range of tonal nuance and colour to these pieces, which is hauntingly caught by the resonant acoustic of the Tyrolean church in which the recordings were made three years ago. The two bows Zehetmair uses, he says, “could hardly be more different, in length, weight and sound formation”, and he creates sharply contrasted sound worlds for the two sets of works – bright, assertive and sharply defined for the sonatas, each of which includes a fugue, and something more subtly varied for the dance-movement sequences of the partitas.