One can probably make a viable case for the proposition that Johann Sebastian Bach composed his collection of solo violin sonatas and partitas for pedagogical purposes. Whether those lessons were intended for members of his own family or for the families of the nobility he served can be left as an exercise for the reader. However, if Bach thought this was music for an audience at all, those thoughts would only arise later in his life when he would meet up with his friends for jam sessions at Gottfried Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig.
The music itself was not published until 1802, but this was a time when Bach was out of fashion. Felix Mendelssohn was probably the best known individual to attempt to revive interest, and the Bach Gesellschaft was formed in 1850, a few years after Mendelssohn’s death. However, the organization was formed solely for the purpose of publishing all of Bach’s music, suggesting that it may have been responsible for reviving the interest of violinists. By the time of the beginning of the twentieth century, the sonatas and partitas had secured a place in just about every violinist’s repertoire.
Violinist Hilary Hahn (photograph by Dana van Leeuwen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony)
That place has now been firmly maintained for over a century, and it continues to be reinforced as every new generation of violinists continues to present recitals that feature solo performances of Bach. Only a little over a month ago, Midori provided a complete account of the three sonatas and three partitas over the course of two programs presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). In the immortal words of Jimmy Durante, “Everybody want to get into the act!;” and last night the Great Performers Series of the San Francisco Symphony responded to the “call” of SFP with a solo recital by violinist Hilary Hahn.
Since she was giving only one performance, Hahn limited herself to half of the full canon She began with the first of the sonatas, BWV 1001 in G minor. The remainder of the first half of her program was taken by the first partita, BWV 1002 in B minor. The intermission was then followed by the second partita, BWV 1004 in D minor. As expected, the audience would not let her leave without an encore. So the evening concluded with the first movement (Prelude) from the third partita, BWV 1006 in E major.
If Bach had, indeed, written these compositions for pedagogical purposes, he most likely would have expected his pupils to explore different ways in which the music could be played. Hahn clearly brought her own approaches to interpretation to all of her selections. Where my own personal tastes were concerned, I found her account of the only sonata, BWV 1001, to be particularly engaging. While this was the first offering of the evening, I have to say that I found her account of the fugue to be the the overall high point.
The partitas, on the other hand, are structured entirely around dance forms. However, there is little definitive knowledge when it comes to how any of those seventeenth-century dances were actually executed. So, if there was little that was “dance-like” in Hahn’s approaches to rhythms and phrasings, I was willing to let her make her own decisions of style in her interpretations. The “grand finale” of the program (prior to the encore) was the chaconne that concludes BWV 1004. Hahn brought her own ideas about expressiveness to her performance, and I had nothing to criticize about any of those ideas.
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