Johann Sebastian Bach, Thomas Zehetmair

Thomas Zehetmair returns to Bach’s three sonatas and three partitas for solo violin, the Sei Solo, more than three decades after his first recording of them. That account appeared in 1983, when he was 21. It was prepared with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and played on a modern instrument. On this double album for ECM New Series he turns to Baroque violins and bows, yet the result is a personal reading rather than a period-instrument manifesto.

The recording was made in August 2016 in the church of the Propstei St. Gerold in Vorarlberg, Austria, a few months after Harnoncourt’s death. Hannelore Guittet recorded it and Manfred Eicher was executive producer. Zehetmair plays two violins from Bach’s lifetime, both by masters of the German tradition. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, one dated 1750 is used for the sonatas and one from 1685 for the partitas. He uses gut strings and plays without chin or shoulder rest. The booklet carries texts by Peter Gülke and by Zehetmair himself.

The six works follow Bach’s order, sonata alternating with partita, three on each disc. The resonant acoustic of St. Gerold is part of the sound, and Zehetmair keeps the arpeggiated chords of the sonata fugues light rather than forceful. In Concerti, Frank Armbruster noted how freely he shapes the fugues rhythmically and how sharply he characterises the stylised dances. The Ciaccona that closes the D minor Partita runs to about twelve and a half minutes. Andrew Clements in The Guardian remembered above all its reflective episodes, veiled and intimate, and found the contrapuntal detail of the sonatas transparent without over-articulation. Jean-Christophe Pucek in Diapason pointed to the whirling Allegro of the A minor Sonata and the swift Gigue of the D minor Partita.

In Die Zeit, Christine Lemke-Matwey heard the physical presence of the Baroque violin in dialogue with God. In The New York Times, Zachary Woolfe heard the Ciaccona as “dancily suspended in air, understatedly intense”. For AllMusic, Blair Anderson described the set as “a personal take with thoughtful borrowings from period scholarship”. Pucek also found an ardent reading that refuses prettiness, with the Double of the B minor Partita’s Allemande reduced to an impalpable rustle.

This is the double CD edition, ECM New Series 2551/52, first released in November 2019.