St. Petersburg-born violinist
Ilya Gringolts has risen rapidly since winning the Paganini Prize in 1998 at age 16. This disc, his second for Deutsche Grammophon, offers two partitas (Nos. 1 and 3) and one sonata (No. 2) from Johann Sebastian Bach's set of six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. The selection is not arbitrary;
Gringolts balances a massive partita with an equally weighty sonata and then closes with the lighter Partita No. 3 in E major. Anyone who thought there was nothing new to say about these showpiece works, or that DG was simply in search of a youthful European face to compete with
Hilary Hahn, should give
Gringolts a listen. His interpretation owes little to that of his mentor
Itzhak Perlman; nor is it even slightly Romantic in the Russian manner. ("The Russians were never very keen on Bach," says
Gringolts. "Their (well, our!) Bach has a tendency to sound a bit on the never-ending side -- a lot of melodic lines, shapeless.") Instead,
Gringolts accomplishes something noteworthy even beyond the violin sphere: his is a mainstream performance of the work, modeled on early music interpretations. He favors a crisp sound with strong motor rhythms and little vibrato, but within this strict framework he pushes the tempo from time to time and sculpts each movement into a distinct shape. Consider his seemingly businesslike yet luminous reading of the Bourrée movement from the Partita No. 1 for an example of solo playing that evokes
John Eliot Gardiner leading an ensemble Baroque work.
Gringolts' approach helps him clarify Bach's fearsomely embedded contrapuntal lines, and his performance combines the idiomatic qualities of Baroque violin performances with a modern sound in both a technical and an interpretive tour de force. Watch out when he gets old enough to buy beer.