J.S. Bach's sonatas for solo violin, part of a long tradition of virtuoso works for the instrument, seem unsuited to transcription. But a guitar comes closer than perhaps any other instrument: it embodies a tension -- not the same tension as with a solo violin but a tension nonetheless -- between melodic material and polyphony. In the hands of Finnish guitarist
Timo Korhonen they produce an unusual effect.
Korhonen's own booklet notes state that he envisions his performances as realizations of principles of Baroque-era Lutheran rhetoric, with intervals and key relationships symbolic of such concepts as the Trinity and divine supplication. The latter is thought to be especially relevant in this case with the composition of the sonatas dating from a period when Bach, on the road with his prince, got word of his wife's untimely death. It's hard to evaluate such contentions without going back to the original texts on which they're based, even setting aside the fact that single-digit integers can be made to mean just about anything you want them to mean. The good news is that
Korhonen's interpretation doesn't match the sober, precisely proportioned reading that might have been expected from a player seeking to demonstrate the presence of extramusical ideas. Quite the contrary: he offers dramatic, liberally ornamented slow movements, blazing fast movements (hear the finale of the Sonata No. 3, track 12), and plenty of tempo flexibility, even in the fugues. The feel is not intellectual or historical, but rather resembles that of
Korhonen's several fine recordings of Latin American guitar music. The high-quality digital sound, recorded in a Finnish church, is close-up and intense, with lots of guitar noise; it's on the edge of too intense, but it's of a piece with
Korhonen's readings.