J. S. Bach: The Complete Violin Concertos par James Ehnes et National Arts Centre Orchestra | Orchestre du Centre national des Arts du Canada
Sur cet album double, le célèbre violoniste James Ehnes se joint à l’Orchestre du Centre national des Arts du Canada, avec lequel il entretient depuis plus de trois décennies des liens d’amitié et un partenariat artistique, pour réaliser un vieux rêve : enregistrer l’intégrale des concertos pour violon de Jean-Sébastien Bach. Cet enregistrement appelé à faire date illustre bien la maîtrise qu’a le compositeur de l’écriture du violon, dans un éventail de styles et de combinaisons d’instruments. Il témoigne également de l’affinité entre James Ehnes et l’Orchestre du Centre national des Arts du Canada et des liens profonds qu’entretient l’instrumentiste avec l’œuvre de Bach.
"Ehnes's playing throughout mixes precision with expressive engagement. His unashamed use of vibrato adds undoubted appeal to such movements as the Adagio from the E major solo concerto ..."
"The tempos are just what you’d expect, and the nuances avoid the precocious Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) of some rival versions, helping to highlight the delicate, precise playing of the soloists’ voices and that of the orchestra. Bach’s music, all clarity and quiet refinement."
"Ehnes is best in the Concerto in A minor, BWVI041. The second movement is simply sublime. His sound gleams, almost implausibly so, and stil there is copious nuance within the luminosity. Ehnes organically moves between the innocent and hyperbolically operatic, the heartfelt and triumphant - it is an entirely convincing performance."
James Ehnes is one of the hottest violinists in the world as of 2025, known for exacting yet exciting, almost preternaturally bright readings of the great violin concerto repertory with top orchestras. Bach isn't what he has been most known for, although he did release a well-regarded collection of the composer's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. Here, he takes on the composer's "complete violin concertos," a troubled concept that involves the reconstruction of lost concertos that are thought to have preceded existing versions for other instruments, as well as double and triple concertos. Ehnes has quite a corps of fans, and they didn't hesitate to put this album on classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2025. In the slow-movement melodies and in the virtuoso fast-movement figuration, he does not disappoint. In addition to being a great virtuoso, he is a skilled collaborator with other players, and there are enjoyable interactions with the soloists from Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra. That orchestra is not a group specializing in Baroque music, and here, it is rather oversized for Bach. Further, the sound tends to mix Ehnes into the orchestral textures rather than showcasing his solo work, an effect especially noticeable in the concertos for multiple instruments. Few will choose this as a primary representation of Bach's violin concerto output, but for Ehnes fans, it will deliver just fine.
Bach’s violin concertos, comprising works with extant autograph sources and adapted compositions believed to have originated as concertos for the instrument, are presented here in clear, generally well-balanced recordings captured over three days. However, James Ehnes’s accounts of the solo concertos fail consistently to convince. Adopting a modern performing approach, his reading of BWV1042 is accurate and precise but smacks somewhat of routine. The opening Allegros of BWV1052R and BWV1041 fare similarly; but the florid solo cantilenas of these works’ and 1056R’s centrepieces, which showcase Ehnes’s sonorous ‘Marsick’ Stradivari of 1715 across most of its range, are particularly expressively rendered; and their brisk, energetic finales are exhilarating.
In the double and triple concertos, Ehnes and his partners alternate as principal voice in the texture or engage in canonic imitation. BWV1060R features beautiful oboe playing by Charles Hamann, with whose seamless phrasing Ehnes strikingly interacts in the lyrically intense Adagio. Yosuke Kawasaki, too, proves an admirable ally in BWV1043: their outer movements are powerful and vivacious and they interweave with lyrical intensity in the soulful Largo.
Jessica Linnebach joins Ehnes and Kawasaki as soloist in BWV1064R in an account most remarkable for its finale, in which each takes a turn at bravura display. Ehnes’s dramatic improvisatory cadenza eventually concludes the interplay. The least memorable performance is that of BWV1044, its outer movements feeling laboured. That said, the eloquent traversal of its central movement is a redeeming factor, along with Luc Beauséjour’s harpsichord cadenza before the finale’s closing ritornello, dispatched with commendable aplomb. The well-drilled orchestra gives sterling support throughout.
ROBIN STOWELL