Bach, J S: Sonatas & Partitas for solo violin, BWV1001-1006

On this 2-CD set the outstanding young Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan brings his youthful insights to bear in a vibrant new recording of what is undoubtedly the most important collection of pieces for solo violin in musical history, J S Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas.

J.S Bach wrote the Six Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin in 1720, midway through his tenure as Capellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold in Cöthen. Whilst with these works Bach paid homage to a well-established Austrian-German tradition of polyphonic solo violin music, the Sonatas and Partitas go far beyond the compositions of his predecessors in their harmonic language The six works are cast in the two principal forms of the Italian trio sonata as codified by Arcangelo Corelli.

Sergey Khachatryan was born in 1985 in Yerevan, Armenia. In December 2000, when only 15, he won the Eighth International Jean Sibelius competition, and in 2005 he claimed First Prize at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. He has performed as soloist with most of the great orchestras of the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the LSO, the New York Philharmonic, and the Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, under the direction of conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Gustavo Dudamel and Gianandrea Noseda. Sergey and his sister Lusine Khachatryan are regular performers at the Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in Paris amongst others. His previous recordings for Naïve include critically acclaimed performances of the Sibelius Violin Concerto (V4959), both of Shostakovich’s Concertos (V5025), and the Violin Sonatas of Franck and Shostakovich, with his sister Lusine on the piano (V5122).