A new account of Bach's great solo violin works treads a thoughtful way through the various interpretative possibilities. On this new disc, from Centaur, violinist Tomás Cotik brings has some thoughtful solutions to the questions which every performer must answer about these works...For this new disc violinist Tomás Cotik has clearly thought greatly about the music and style of the performance and has produced a series of articles for The Strad, talking about his approach to the works. Cotik's approach might be described as intelligently mixed...The result is a very clean, direct and very lean sound, often quite intense, with a strong linear quality. This gives an expressive... feel to his playing... and overall he brings a sense of the movements' architecture, keeping the music flowing without a tendency to stop too long to enjoy the scenery. So in the great Chaconne from Partita No. 2, we have a real feel for the movement's larger scale rather than moving from moment to moment, whilst the dance movements are often quite clearly that with a feel of the underlying dance rhythms. Cotik is not trying to make the music mean something in the extra-musical sense, but that does not preclude expressivity and emotion. If you are interested in Bach's works for solo violin but uncertain which path to pick through the mass of different interpretations, than Cotik's intelligent middle way is a good place to start. A performance from a modern violinist who has clearly read the literature and thought about each of the decisions in context. That makes the performance sound rather dry, it is not. Cotik's virtue here is to be able to be expressive within his chosen medium Robert Hughill READ MORE