David Grimal plays Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin

By -

French violinist David Grimal plays the complete set of Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (BMV 1001-06) on a new recording from ambroisie. Grimal’s performances of these iconic works by Bach are coupled with composer Brice Pauset’s 2009 Kontrapartita. Pauset, born in Besançon , France in 1965, is cited by Grimal as a key influence in his understanding of Bach’s music.

Grimal speaks at length in the album’s liner notes about his special preparation for this recording – a journey to what he calls “Bach’s magic mountain”, which included his intensive work studying and performing Beethoven’s String Quartets, an earlier live recording he made of Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas, and a Bach tour he made across India. Grimal also provides details of his particular approach to tuning and other technical matters: “What I really needed was a different violin, set up in a Baroque way. But there was no question of exchanging my Stradivarius for another violin! This recording, therefore, is a transcription of Bach’s sonatas and partitas, played on a 1710 Stradivarius with a modern setup, metal strings, and a Francois-Xavier Tourte bow made in the early 19th century.”

In addition to the two CDs, Grimal’s new recording also includes a DVD, featuring a film by Frédéric Delesque in which Grimal performs the complete Partita No. 2 in D minor. This five-movement partita concludes with the famous “Chaconne”, a monumental movement lasting close to 15 minutes that represents, for some, the summit of the solo literature for violin.

Bach composed his six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin while in Köthen in 1720, at around the time he wrote such other works as the Brandenburg Concertos and solo cello suites. The Sonatas each consist of four movements in a slow-fast-slow-fast pattern; the Partitas are suites of dance movements.

Grimal concludes his contribution to the liner notes with this poetic view of Bach’s music: “Although ‘Bach cries out’, he made his peace with the world through music. He used it to describe the world, and his ‘string theory’ resolved the ontological gap between the infinitely small and infinitely large; he speaks to us of the timeless moment of the eternal beginning. God, mankind, nature, simplicity rather than complexity, and life above all. It is the contour of the world under the shining stars.”

David Grimal was born in 1973 in Paris and started to play the violin at the age of five. He won the First Prize in violin and chamber music at the Paris Conservatory in 1993. Afterwards he did postgraduate studies with Regis Pasquier, as well as with such personalities as Philipp Hirschhorn (to whom his new Bach recording is dedicated), Shlomo Mintz, and Isaac Stern.

Bach / Grimal
Bach: Sonatas and Partitas
Brice Pauset: Kontrapartita
David Grimal, violin
V 5159
Two CDs-plus-DVD set available in the U.S. on April 28 from ambroisie

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more