1021 J. S. Bach Violin Sonata in G major, BWV 1021 Penelope Spencer David Roblou

This G major Sonata (which survives in a copy by Anna Magdalena Bach with annotations by her husband) can confidently be assigned to Bach s originating hand and the bass line of its impeccably proportioned opening Adagio was sometimes recycled for teaching purposes in the Bach household. It s impossible though, to imagine that any of Bach s pupils could have begun to approach the expressive intensity of the longlimbed cantilena their teacher floats above it here a perfect example of what Debussy so admired in Bach: that state of divine arabesque. It s a state broached again in the plangent E minor Largo following the intervention of a tripletime Vivace made the more vivacious by bold leaps and pungent violin chordal stopping.