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GRAMOPHONE (01 /2014)
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CCSSA35513
0723385355137 (ID350)
Reviewer: Duncan
Druce
Podger’s
exploration of ‘senza basso’ Baroque violin works
This album could be seen as a companion to Rachel Podger’s memorable account
of Bach’s solo violin music (7/99, 12/99), providing a context and exploring
some of the different ways Baroque composers approached writing for
unaccompanied violin. Bach himself makes an appearance with the Flute
Partita, transposed down from A to G minor, and, in this performance,
sounding entirely comfortable as violin music. Of the other composers,
Pisendel, leader of the Dresden orchestra, stands closest to Bach in the
technical complexity of his writing. Podger’s beautiful playing of the first
movement’s written-out decorations and her vital approach throughout the
sonata mix virtuosity with an element of grandeur. The impression is
powerful, thanks to her customary polished delivery combined with a bold,
temperamental style.
In their different ways, Matteis and Tartini demonstrate an alternative way of writing for solo violin (apart from Matteis’s fugal Fantasia) – concentrating on a single melodic line, with harmony more lightly touched in. Both composers rely on ornamentation to enhance the expressive effect and Podger’s performance is outstanding, its precision and imagination creating a winning impression of spontaneity.
Matteis’s ‘Passaggio rotto’ really sounds as though the music is being improvised.
Podger gives an outstanding
performance, too, of the Biber Passacaglia, projecting the dynamic of the whole
piece most persuasively and characterising vividly each stage of Biber’s
inventive elaboration of the simple ground bass. We’re left in no doubt that
this is one of the peaks of Baroque violin music.
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