Bach - Violin Sonatas, Nos 4-5

Collectors have good reason to be grateful to Biddulph for this release. Alfred Dubois is remembered today, if at all, as the teacher of Arthur Grumiaux and less as a superb stylist and violinist in his own right. Thus the release of this Dubois disc, graced by the artistry of pianist Marcel Maas, makes it a valuable addition to the list of violinistic reissues. Dubois was born in 1898 and studied in Brussels. After leaving the Conservatoire he studied with Ysaÿe between the years 1917 and 1920, won prestigious competitions and teamed up in a sonata duo with Maas. The 1920s and 1930s were his heyday, culminating in the professorship in Brussels in 1927, in succession to his erstwhile mentor Ysaÿe. At thirty he was now the pre-eminent Belgian soloist, touring America and recording and forming, during the war, his own quartet ,with pupil Grumiaux as second violin, they refused to play for the occupying Germans. His sudden death at the early age of fifty-one came as a terrible blow. Dubois, like Szymon Goldberg, is a connoisseur s violinist. His performances of the Franco-Belgian repertoire are real benchmarks of stylistic acumen and expressive judgement. Only slightly less so are these Bach recordings. His tone is one of great purity and refinement with a generally medium paced vibrato and subtle, not overuse, of portamento and ritardando. He makes successive portamenti in the Adagio of the C minor but that is one of the few instances where the device feels unrelieved but he sustains the Adagio of the F minor with heroic nobility, as he does the Largo second movement of No 6. Technically he is eloquent when there are problems it is usually a matter of finger slip or intonational buckle, as in the Andante of the Sonata in A ,the only movement they recorded of that work. If I have reservations at all about his Bach playing they centre on a certain immobility; whilst the gravity, lyricism and intellectual profundity of his playing are not in doubt there are moments when I wished for a greater motoric sense, not least to act as a contrastive device. But these are otherwise most distinguished performances. Coupled with them is Maas s solo Bach. The Toccata in C minor receives a reading distinguished by superb voicings, colour and vivacity, by well-sprung internal rhythms and by calibrated dynamics buoyant and imaginative Bach playing. Biddulph have utilised very clean copies of the 78s and there is no competition for these 1933 recordings. Dubois deserves nothing but the best in restoration and he gets it handsomely in this excellent release. Jonathan Woolf --Jonathan Woolf

Johann Sebastian BACH 1685-1750 Violin Sonata No. 4 in C minor BWV 1017 Violin Sonata No. 5 in F minor BWV 1018 Violin Sonata No. 6 in G BWV 1019 Violin Sonata No. 2 in A andante un poco BWV 1019 Toccata in C minor BWV 911 Toccata in E minor Fugue BWV 914 Alfred Dubois violin Marcel Maas piano Recorded 1933 BIDDULPH BID 80171 72.52mins