Renaud Capuçon and David Fray play Bach

In my younger years, I used to play the six Bach sonatas for violin and keyboard. They are fine works, with some highly interesting movements, and illustrate that, even early on in 1717, Bach was head and shoulders above his Italian contemporaries. I have acquired a new CD on which Renaud Capuçon and David Fray tackle four of these sonatas, where both violin and keyboard have equal prominence.

The CD is fine. David Fray plays the keyboard part on a piano, thank heavens, rather than on a jangling harpsichord that would have been the best Bach could come up with back in 1717. I am not a lover of the sound of harpsichords: “two skeletons copulating on a tin roof” as Thomas Beecham termed it many years ago. Renaud Capuçon, an expert chamber music player, projects the violin part superbly. He does not dabble in the current fad for “pseuo-baroque” playing, but neither does he try to make Bach's violin writing sound like César Franck. Vibrato is used, but judiciously. A CD to keep at hand and to enjoy Bach in seventeen movements. On re-listenings, I admire the CD more and more: for Bach's music, for Capuçon's violin playing, and for Fray's pianism. There is a lightness of touch and a commendable willingness to dance to Bach's dance rhythms that I find wholly admirable. This, I would venture to suggest, is how these works should be played in our current world.