Bach’s Chaconne for Solo Violin, the bedazzling finale to his Partita No. 2 in D minor, has awed audiences and fellow composers for nearly three centuries. Brahms called Bach’s ingenuous meditation on a simple harmonic progression "one of the most wonderful, incomprehensible pieces of music . . . a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings."

 

For her Cedille Records debut and first solo recording, Jennifer Koh performs Bach’s complete Partita and presents two rarely heard late-Romantic solo chaconnes that Bach inspired.

 

A disciple of Brahms, violinist/composer Richard Barth’s 1908 Ciacona in B minor reflects the virtuoso violin technique of the post-Paganini era and speaks in a rich tonal language. Max Reger’s 1912 Chaconne in G minor updates the baroque form with an iridescent, neo-Wagnerian harmonic palette.

 

Winner of the top prize at the 1994 International Tchaikovsky Competition and 1995 recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Miss Koh applies her "lucid phrasing, sensitivity, and suppleness" - New York Times to all three works.