LDV88-9

18 BACH | SONATAS & PARTITAS BWV 1001-1006 What was the starting point for this third recording? The lockdown was a time of withdrawal into ourselves. I enjoyed being with my family, my children, but I needed to refocus, to stay whole in my mind, during that anxiety-inducing period for artists. So I went back to my ‘breviary’, Bach, who is also a manual for the instrument, though admittedly in terms of the techniques of his time, without going up to very high positions, without systematic vibrato, without glissandi; but these are what mathematicians call the abscissae and ordinates of music. In other words, returning to these pieces was a refuge in a different form of crisis from the one I mentioned earlier. What are the specific technical features of your new version? I recorded on pure gut strings, which are more fragile, less stable, but offer a benefit in terms of sound production, resonance, the grain of the sound. And I chose a Baroque bow of the type used in the period in which these pieces were written; it’s a lighter bow that allows me to practise different articulations, a different way of playing the chords, but also a lightness, a diction, a variety that are interesting. Having said that, I’m still a little bit in the middle of the road, because although I play on my 1710 Stradivarius, its bass-bar isn’t fitted in the same way as on a ‘Baroque’ violin, which means I can’t play at a period pitch. So I play at a ' = 440 Hz. I gain in expressiveness and ‘historical truth’, but I lose the efficiency of modernity! As with my ensemble Les Dissonances, I try to combine the best of both worlds, which isn’t always easy. Ivry Gitlis, Jascha Heifetz and even Nathan Milstein played a magnificent post-Romantic Bach, which doesn’t correspond at all to the path I have embarked on, but I try to reconcile that tradition, the one I come from, with the recent contributions of ‘historically informed’ musicians.