Bach Solo Violin Sonatas: At heart a fugue

From the late 19th century and through most of the 20th, the interpretation of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas seems to have been premised on the fact that Bach was a great composer and therefore the playing had to be impressive, heavy, dominating and ultra-serious, with an emphasis on big sound and melody. Of course it was up to us, the performers, to make Bach great, yet consideration of harmony and rhythm was almost non-existent, despite the fact that the composer’s biographers over two centuries had spoken with insight and emphasis about Bach’s harmonic genius. Something that had a powerful impact on me personally was reading that Beethoven, in a letter to one of his publishers, described Bach as the ‘father of harmony’.

This century-long concept of Bach performance began to change with the awakening of the enlightened concept of playing in Baroque style, mostly on so-called original instruments. The major changes were in sound and articulation – harmony, as always, depended on the imagination and ear of the individual. But the fact that instruments were tuned to a frequency of 415Hz did not by any means assure a profound interpretation…