Sonatas and Partitas

Bach's set of three Sonatas and three Partitas for unaccompanied violin, were completed by 1720. Perhaps seeded as early as 1703, they were ultimately fruits of his years employed as Kapellmeister at the court in Köthen where his employer Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, a Calvinist with little requirement for liturgical music and also a keen musician, encouraged Bach to write much instrumental music for public and private entertainment. Nothing written before approached the complexity, expressive range and scale of this music, from the volleys of chords and rhythmic intricacy of the B minor Partita's opening Allemanda>/i> and the endlessly inventive elaboration of the same work's variant 'doubles' to the vastness of the D minor Partita's concluding Ciaccona, possibly the longest stand-alone movement written to that point, which contains worlds of contrast in its 64 variants of the opening bars. Reportedly a fine violinist himself, Bach completely redefined virtuosic and expressive violinistic possibility in these works. This classic edition by Carl Flesch from Edition Peters provides a fascinating insight into the great virtuoso tradition of the early twentieth century. The score is presented as a parallel edition, with Flesch's edited score (containing numerous fingerings, bowings and performance directions) appearing above Bach's original.