Sonata No 1 in G minor BWV 1001 - Bach
Partita No 2 in D minor BWV 1004 - Bach
In the second of her two recitals for the 1999 Bach Festival, Maya Homburger and her baroque violin once more demonstrated the superiority of period instruments in this early music. The instrument alone is powerless, but controlled by one for whom it seems a natural extension of the voice, it translates the printed notes into sounds that transcend their origins.
You have to be a virtuoso to perform this music, but if you have the soul of a virtuoso all is lost, for then the music takes second place to display. Maya Homburger does not interpose her personality between Bach and the listener, but strives to convey al that the composer intended. We cannot know exactly what that was, after a gap of centuries, but I think the audience in St Anne's Church on Sunday experienced this music to the full.
The celebrated Ciaccona that ends Partita No 2 was accorded an even more rapt stillness of attention than the rest of the recital, and deservedly so. Even in Bach's output, it is a landmark. Not all secular music sounds fitting in a church, but these works for solo violin have, in the performance we heard, a sense of the highest that can be seen as an act of worship.
