The totally innocent ear, deprived of any comparison, could be forgiven for judging these to be definitive performances of Bach's Partitas and Sonatas. They define, indeed, as few other performances do, the structural frame and rhythmic working-out of each movement with extraordinary determination and authority. The purity of intonation is absolute; the energy locked into the sheer sound of the instrument startling. And two discs, as they say, for the price of one!
Those who know and love the performances of the Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux will be thrilled to rediscover these Berlin recordings of the early 1960s, sharply remastered and sounding out in a roomy acoustic. The platinum gleam glancing off every moment of double-stopping, and the flinty brightness struck where contrapuntal voices meet ring out as never before. The arpeggios of the Presto of the G minor Sonata flash like light from the many facets of a prism; and the same mesmeric steadiness of moto perpetuo makes for a heady finish to the C major Sonata.
What dominates, though, is the rhythmic rigour of Grumiaux's playing. His perfectionism, fused with a real sense of struggle, brings sheer might to the fugues of the Sonatas: it is rather like watching a climber scaling a vast rock face, securing himself with a pick and leaping across the next crevasse.
The Partitas are no less severe. The Allemande of the first sets a tempo which allows for the delineation of each phrase's character, while never compromising the onward movement of the whole. Every tucked string tells, whether sustaining, echoing, linking or fading. And the doubles, or variations, are no less rigorous. The flowing 12-quaver bars of that of the Sarabande offer no relief from its own stately austerity: rather, it is as if a miniaturized geometrical pattern were being elaborated over its frame.
There is little of the sweetness of a Heifetz, the passing whimsy of a Shumsky here. And yet Grumiaux loosens up in the D minor Partita, free as it is of double-stopping, as though to pace himself for the magisterial Chaconne. This is a monument of physical and intellectual virtuosity, stretching out to encompass the widest distances, yet able to draw in to itself once again, as though to recharge the extraordinary energies radiating from this fine set.'