Kavakos’s Bach is unshowy but alluring

JS Bach

Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin

Leonidas Kavakos (violin)

Sony 19439903132 137:56 mins (2 discs)

Although no mention is made of it in the booklet, the first surprise awaiting the listener is that Leonidas Kavakos plays at something like ‘authentic’ pitch (roughly a semitone lower than modern norms). Those with pitch sensitivity can hardly miss it, as Kavakos elects to open with (traditionally) the most tonally brilliant work in the set, the E major Partita, which therefore emerges less ear-ringingly direct than usual. It also sounds as though Kavakos is using gut, as opposed to metal or steel-wound strings, resulting in a more mellow, slightly grainier soundworld. Additionally, he positively relishes the natural sound of open strings, exchanging the timbre-beautifying obsessions of post-Romantic fingerings, with all their ingenious finger replacements and myriad position changes, for the more bracing allure of allowing the violin’s natural resonances to sing out unimpeded.

Kavakos allows the violin’s resonances to sing out unimpeded

Furthermore, Kavakos’s stylistic sensitivities bring an element of decorative fantasy to the naked urtext, as would have occurred in the hands of any skilled player of the period. He uses vibrato very sparingly and with exquisite subtlety as a microcosmic timbral shading, and employs the bow (most noticeably in the notorious string-crossings of the C major Sonata’s Fugue) with a deftness and lightness of touch more suggestive of a Baroque original. He also exchanges the cantabile smoothness and resonance typical of mid-20th-century playing for a dazzling range of articulation, which makes the various dance movements really zing. Kavakos concludes with the mighty D minor Chaconne, which emerges all the more poignantly for not having its innate greatness imposed on it