Johann Sebastian Bach - Sonatas for Violin & Harpsichord (Isabelle Faust; Kristian Bezuidenhout)

Information

Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach

CD1:

• (01) Sonata No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1014
• (05) Sonata No. 2 in A major, BWV 1015
• (09) Sonata No. 3 in E major, BWV 1016

CD2:

• (01) Sonata No. 4 in C minor, BWV 1017
• (05) Sonata No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1018
• (09) Sonata No. 6 in G major, BWV 1019

Isabelle Faust, violin
Kristian Bezuidenhout, harpsichord

Date: 2018
Label: harmonia mundi
http://www.harmoniamundi.com/#!/albums/2307

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Review

Confession time: I first encountered Bach’s sonatas for violin and keyboard when I heard Yehudi Menuhin soaring deliciously above the plodding harpsichord of George Malcolm and the apprehensive gamba-playing of Ambrose Gauntlett. At least that was the slow movements; in the faster ones Malcolm suddenly came back to life, while Menuhin became less secure.

This is perhaps why it took me a long time to love these sonatas – a reminder of how much recordings can shape our view of repertoire we don’t know. So if someone discovered these pieces through this new set from Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout I like to think they’d be instantly won over by the music. The harpsichord is a fabulous copy by John Phillips after a Johann Heinrich Gräbner instrument loaned to Bezuidenhout by Trevor Pinnock. And Faust has borrowed an equally characterful Jacobus Stainer violin from 1658 which, as Bezuidenhout puts it in his fascinating essay, ‘has the necessary brilliance to cut through some of the more sumptuous keyboard textures’.

Faust and Bezuidenhout played these sonatas a lot in concert before taking them into the studio and it shows – both in the detail and the trust that allows for real risk-taking. Sample the Fourth Sonata, for instance. Faust’s dynamic phrasing of the held notes in the second-movement Allegro gives the line great character, Bezuidenhout seeming to breathe with her, while the finale is full of sparkle and energy but never breathless, the ornamentation sounding entirely inevitable. Something as simple as a sustained note (the opening movement of the Fifth Sonata) is exquisitely coloured and Faust’s double-stopping in the third-movement Adagio has a wondrously confiding quality.

In the opening of the First Sonata, Bezuidenhout is so beguiling that you hardly notice Faust stealing in, pianissimo. Her subtlety is matched by Rachel Podger with Trevor Pinnock, though Faust finds an even greater plasticity of line which is very winning. The fantasy of the opening Adagio of No 3 is also alluring on this new set. Once you add a viola da gamba to the mix, the balance changes and you’re less aware of the violin; and while Manze is always compelling intellectually sometimes I found his tempos a little staid (for instance in the finale of the now gamba-less First Sonata). Richard Tognetti is a wonderfully creative player but the switching between harpsichord and organ even within sonatas is somewhat eccentric. Faust and Bezuidenhout bring these sonatas alive without recourse to gimmickry – sample the joyous closing movement of the Third Sonata.

Can I find fault with this set? No, I cannot. It’s an eloquent and beautifully recorded homage to the composer and demands to be in the collection of all Bach lovers post-haste.

-- Harriet Smith, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Mar/Bach_sonatas_HMM902256.htm
https://www.thestrad.com/reviews-old/isabelle-faust-kristian-bezuidenhout-bach-sonatas-for-violin-and-harpsichord/7668.article
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/bach-complete-sonatas-for-violin-and-harpsichord-isabelle-faust-kristian-bezuidenhout/
https://www.audaud.com/bach-sonatas-violin-harpsichord-complete-pine-faust-cedille-harmonia-mundi/
https://www.allmusic.com/album/js-bach-sonatas-for-violin-harpsichord-mw0003137166
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bach-Sonatas-Harpsichord-Isabelle-Faust/dp/B076Q175HV

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Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bach enriched established German styles through his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and his adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from Italy and France. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach

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Isabelle Faust (born 1972 in Esslingen) is a German violinist. She trained with Christoph Poppen and Dénes Zsigmondy. Faust won First Prize in the 1993 Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy. Since 1996, she has performed on the "Sleeping Beauty" Stradivarius violin of 1704, on loan from Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. Faust has performed as guest soloist with most of the world's major orchestras and won multiple awards for her recordings, mostly on Harmonia Mundi. She is a proponent of new music and has given world premieres of works by, among others, Olivier Messiaen, Werner Egk, and Jörg Widmann.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabelle_Faust

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Kristian Bezuidenhout (born 1979 in South Africa) is generally ranked among the leading period-instrument keyboard players of his generation. He studied at the Rochester, New York-based Eastman School of Music, where his teachers included Malcolm Bilson, Rebecca Penneys, and Paul O'Dette. Bezuidenhout is best known for his fortepiano interpretations of music by Mozart, and since 2010, has been involved in a project with the Harmonia Mundi label to record the entire solo keyboard output of the composer. Bezuidenhout is on the faculties of the Eastman School of Music and Schola Cantorum in Basel.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kristian-bezuidenhout-mn0001671817
http://kristianbezuidenhout.com/

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