Johann Sebastian Bach, Michelle Makarski, Keith Jarrett

Johann Sebastian Bach began his six sonatas for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, at the courts of Weimar and Köthen and kept revising them for decades. C.P.E. Bach later counted them “among the best works of my dear father”. Violin and keyboard meet as equals here, looking ahead to the classical duo sonata. On this double album Michelle Makarski and Keith Jarrett play them on violin and piano. It was Jarrett's first classical recording since his Mozart concertos of 1996, and only his second time recording Bach on piano rather than harpsichord.

The two have been friends since Jarrett's Bridge of Light recording. Makarski invited him to explore the sonatas, and over two years they met often just for the pleasure of playing them. The idea of recording came late. The sessions took place in November 2010 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, with Peter Laenger as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. Jarrett had already recorded Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, the Goldberg Variations and The French Suites for ECM, and Makarski's New Series recitals include Caoine and Elegio per un'ombra.

The first five sonatas each have four movements, alternating slow and fast. The Sixth, in G major, has five, and at its centre the keyboard plays an Allegro alone. The Fifth, in F minor, opens with its longest movement, a Largo of eight minutes. Jarrett keeps the basses dry and the pedal sparing, and Makarski's tone is lean and never pushes forward. As Susanne Kübler noted in the Tages-Anzeiger, the pair at times come close to period practice despite the modern grand.

In The Strad, Robin Stowell wrote that Jarrett “makes a persuasive case for using the piano in Bach performance”, singling out his solo movement in BWV 1019. Makarski, he added, matches him all the way. Dominy Clements of MusicWeb International praised her restrained vibrato, which still keeps plenty of life in the sound. David N. Lewis of Chronogram heard in 2014 “clean, emotive, unfussy, and flexible Bach”, played by expert improvisers who stay respectful to the score.

Double CD on ECM New Series, ECM New Series 2230/31, first released in September 2013.