First released in 2005, Julia Fischer’s multiple award-winning recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas & Partitas has proven to be an evergreen. In 2017, it was re-released as a lavish 3LP boxset, as well as a re-designed 2SACD edition. This legendary recording now returns in a more affordable Stereo version. This album is a RE-RELEASED VERSION of PTC5186095 (first released in 2005). Bach’s remarkable Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are revered for their boundless inventiveness, technical ingenuity and emotional depth. With their brilliant preludes, stately dances and complex four-part fugues, the demands on the performer are enormous – from rapid scale passages, double stopping and arpeggios, to the skill and concentration required to create the illusion of separately moving and interweaving voices. The set is full of surprises. Sonata No. 3 contains a colossal fugue of increasing complexity and difficulty (and at over 350 bars, one of his longest). Partita No. 3 is one of Bach’s sunniest works, with the virtuoso Prelude and the charming Gavotte being regularly performed as encore pieces. Most famous of all is the legendary Chaconne from Partita No. 2, a kaleidoscopic series of variations as deeply felt and cathartic as anything Bach wrote and an incontestable milestone in classical music. Julia Fischer’s recording for PENTATONE was showered with praise upon its first release in 2005. “Classic accounts by Milstein and Grumiaux have been usurped by this extraordinarily gifted newcomer” enthused BBC Music Magazine. “Her mastery is beyond question,” affirmed Gramophone magazine “her ability to trace a smooth, even line a source of pleasure itself.” It also achieved the rare distinction of garnering three of France’s most prestigious awards: the Diapason d’Or from Diapason; the CHOC from Le Monde de la Musique; and the highest rating from Classica-Repertoire.
