Title: A Robust and Youthful Bach
Product review: Whatever melancholy soulfulness you've heard in previous performances of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, you won't hear in the recording by Rachel Podger. This Bach is the music of a youthful athlete, sounding as optimistic as Ms. Podger looks on the cover of the CD. There's no question that Rachel Podger has vigorous mastery of her fiddle, and that this performance is uniformly enjoyable. It would only dog-in-the-manger to wish that her "affective" range were a little wider, somewhere closer to cellist Anner Bylsma, for instance, than to Yo-yo Ma. But then perhaps I'd have to worry about over-interpretation.I've been tacitly rebuked recently for not calling listeners' attention to Rachel Podger. One could do worse than to trust her "complete" technique to be worth hearing on any of her recordings of Bach or Mozart.
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