Bach - Sonatas and Partitas

The Guardian 80

Christian Tetzlaff
(Ondine)

This is Christian Tetzlaff’s third recording of Bach’s solo Sonatas and Partitas, the pinnacle of the violin repertoire, but don’t fear that he has run out of things to say. His sleeve note explaining his approach to the cycle is as thoughtful and personal as you would expect from him, and his realisation of it in performance does indeed hang together as a journey from solemnity towards acceptance and joy, with the lengthy Chaconne of the D minor Sonata perhaps representing a very personal bereavement.

Within this, the movements can be not only unpredictable, as one expects from Tetzlaff, but uneven, and the odd one doesn’t come off – the second Double of the first Sonata, for example, which races by in short, springy bow strokes, so fast that it sounds gabbled. Yet the slower movements in particular have a ruminative air and a clarity that is entirely absorbing.