Bach Unaccompanied Violin Sonatas-Johanna Martzy

This guy does great with Bach's Cello Suites, highly recommended.

Zuill Bailey

Good Listening

Peter

I just purchased the Testament reissues and they are quite nice, although it's a bit difficult for me to listen to an hour of solo violin. The Electric Recording Co. and Coup D'Archet offerings look beautiful, but I'm not sure I would spend that kind of money for them. But I do appreciate the efforts of anyone trying to turn out a no-compromise product.

It's interesting that all this attention is now focused on a somewhat (very?) obscure player, but it's nice that she gets to live again. I hope there is a heaven and that she is there and happy that people are listening to her music.

Just bumping this back up. When I first purchased the Testament CDs, I found it a bit difficult to adjust to listening to solo violin on an extended basis, but once I got my mind wrapped around the concept, I am really enjoying these recordings.

If you like classical music and wish to expand your horizons a bit, I definitely recommend purchasing these CDs. Whether you want to spend $600 on the records is up to you. In any case, the music is good.

I just bought the vinyl reissue of Johann Martzy playing Dvorak's Violin Concerto. This is a monophonic recording in decent sound, but the performance is exquisite. I plan to check out other recordings from this violinist.

Chayro, there are so very many recordings of this work (Bach unacc. vln.) that it's mind-boggling to open up a discussion of which are the best ones. That said, I believe the two Heinrich Szeryng recordings are very highly regarded as far as "old-school" players go. My favorites are later artists who take the more "period" approach--Sergiu Luca, Rachel Podger and my absolute favorite, Lucy van Dael. Having heard her recordings with Baroque set-up (instrument, strings, and bow) it's now harder for me to listen to modern versions. YMMV, but you might want to check out some Szeryng and some van Dael.