J.S. Bach: Inventions & Partita, Janine Jansen, violin

My initial apprehension regarding a disc of Bach arrangements was laid to rest as soon as I heard Janine Jansen’s latest recording Inventions & Partita. She has been joined by Maxim Rysanov (viola) and Torleif Thedéen (cello) for Bach’s 15 Two-part Inventions and 15 Three-part Inventions. The arrangements of these are incredibly faithful and played as much as possible from the original keyboard scores. Occasional changes have been made (for practical reasons) by transposing the melodic line up an octave.

About the performers

Janine Jansen is a Dutch violinist who built an international career on both mainstream concerto repertoire and more unusual chamber projects like this one, recording for Decca across a broad range of composers. Violist Maxim Rysanov and cellist Torleif Thedéen are both established chamber and concerto soloists in their own right, Rysanov born in Ukraine and long based in the UK, Thedéen a Swedish cellist with an extensive solo discography. Arranging Bach’s two- and three-part keyboard Inventions for string trio is a genuinely unusual undertaking; pairing the result with the solo-violin Partita No. 2, one of the most demanding works in the entire violin repertoire, gives the disc real range beyond the arrangement novelty alone.

Considerable thought seems to have been given to texture and balance and one only has to look at the Three Part Invention no. 5, where violin and viola are accompanied by pizzicato cello, to see that this work has paid off. The overall result is a refreshing way to listen to these at times under-rated pieces, each line is clear, each musician bringing out the melody in beautiful long phrases.

The Times recently described Jansen as “the queen of the sensitively woven and singing line, and of myriad subtleties in expression”. This is evident throughout the disc. She steals the limelight in Bach’s Partita no. 2 with its mammoth Chaconne. The music is brought to life by Jansen’s intensely musical, yet delicate, interpretation.

About the Chaconne

The Chaconne that closes the D minor Partita has a reputation that extends well beyond the violin repertoire it was written for, 64 variations built on a single four-bar theme, growing steadily more complex and demanding across roughly a quarter of an hour of unaccompanied playing. Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann, called it “a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings,” adding that if he’d imagined he could have written it himself, “the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.” Brahms later made his own left-hand-only piano arrangement of the piece; Busoni’s more famous two-hand transcription followed in 1893, independent enough of the original that it’s often treated as a composition in its own right rather than a straightforward transcription.