Donald Satz wrote:

>Mimi Ezust wrote concerning Bach's violin sonatas & partitas:
>
>>Sergiu Luca has a very interesting HIP set.  Not to everyone's taste,
>>because he plays everything very differently from any other performer.
>
>I must be adventurous.  I've had the cd set for a few years, and it is
>a fine performance.  I'm not sure, however, what Mimi feels is so unique
>about the interpretations.  Most other baroque violin recordings I have
>heard are also distinctive.

Luca breaks up most of the chords, for one thing!  This was the feature
that first caught my ear, and indeed, threatened at first to shut my mind
against it.  Many performers try as hard as they can to play the chords as
only one sound, and in the process can get pretty chunky or raspy and
rough.  I'll try to explain what I mean:

It is up to the performer to hold on or emphasize a particular note of the
chord with the bow to bring out a particular melody line, so that feature
in itself can become a very individualistic performance "symptom." The
melody line chosen can be a sensible one or it can lead nowhere and leave
the violinist stranded!  Generally, the chords in Bach and other composers
are played from the lowest pitch to the highest, even if you are striving
for a compact chordal sound.  But there are some places in the Bach Sonatas
and Partitas where a chord has to be played from the top down or even
slightly arpeggiated from top to the bottom and back up quickly in order to
preserve the desired melody.  If it's done correctly it can fool the ear.

Luca nearly always arpeggiates his chords.  This means that he plays each
of the written chordal notes as individual sounds and does it with a very
graceful bowing style.  He also adds his own ornamentation, especially on
the repeats.  This was rarely done by most of the more 'modern' violinists
so it was an instantly recognizable feature of Luca's set.  And since he
was one of the earliest of the HIP performers, his bow attacks, sustained
notes that were shaped, and his phrasing, were quite distinctive, never
boring and frequently surprising.  As far as I can tell, this is still
true after many years and many more HIP performances.

The Chaconne, by the way, has a long passage in its middle that in the
manuscript is only written as simple chords.  Traditionally the performer
is required to fill them in and play them inventively.  Violinists have
freedom to carry out the chords using bariolage (fancy bow work crossing
over several strings), and slurring (connecting melody notes in a single
bow) or separating the notes in a variety of rhythmic patterns to bring
out different melody lines.

If you listen carefully, you will notice real differences in each
performance.  In a well-planned execution of this section, the pattern
will change every few measures, and will get progressively more complex
and exciting.  Sometimes Bach's score has three note chords, sometimes four
note chords, but always somewhere in those chords is that familiar simple
repeated figure of the basic Chaconne melody AND the distinctive rhythm, as
well.  Every violinist I know experiments exhaustively with this section,
and while I would never say a particular violinist is the 'best' at this
feat, I think Luca's realization of this passage is especially exciting.

In the score there is *no* indication given for most of the bowing features
I have discussed.  (I haven't even begun to talk about left-hand fingering
in Bach, either, and this is a huge topic.  Fingering makes a tremendous
difference in tone color and execution of melody lines.)

It is the responsibility of the violinist to use common sense and exhibit
musical taste, and figure out all of the phrasing, bowing, and fingering.
That's one major reason why these pieces are so appreciated by violinists
- they are fascinating puzzles to work on, and they afford intellectual
and emotional heights seldom reached in the practice of other compositions.
One can speak about an intelligent performance, then, and mean that the
performer has noticed certain melodic or rhythmic features in Bach and
has figured out how to communicate them effectively.  Luca obviously
thought very carefully about each movement and brought freshness to his
interpretation.  Besides which, his Bach gives me massive goose bumps.

Mimi Ezust <[log in to unmask]>