Bach – Complete Partitas and Sonatas for Violin Solo (2CDs, Channel Classics)

Hitherto we have heard Rachel Podger only in early chamber works and as Andrew Manze’s partner in Bach double concertos: here now, at last, is an opportunity to hear her on her own. And you couldn’t be more on your own than in Bach’s mercilessly revealing Solo Sonatas and Partitas, perhaps the ultimate test of technical mastery, expressiveness, structural phrasing and deep musical perception for a violinist. Playing a Baroque instrument, Podger challenges comparison with the much praised and individual reading by Monica Huggett: she has many of the same virtues – flawless intonation, warm tone, expressive nuances, clear understanding of the proper balance of internal strands – but her approach is sometimes markedly different. This is most obvious in the great D minor Chaconne, in which Huggett’s rhythmical flexibility worried some people, but in which Podger, here as elsewhere, while fully characterising the varied repetitions of the ground, is intent on building up the cumulative effect. One pleasing general feature of her playing, indeed, is her firm but unassertive rhythmic sense; others are the absence of any suspicion that technical difficulties exist (instead a calm control, as in the G minor’s Siciliano), her subtle phrasing (as in the B minor Corrente, with the fleetest of doubles), the cross rhythms of her G minor Presto and, most strikingly, the poetic feeling with which she imbues the initial Adagio of the G minor Sonata. She touches in chords lightly: though some might have been split downwards rather than upwards so as to preserve the continuity of a lower part (for example, in bar 5 of the B minor Allemande, bar 10 of the Chaconne and in the 18th and 19th bars of its major section). Her D minor Giga is stunning. Altogether a most impressive and rewarding disc.