Book Description

It is one of Josef Joachim’s great merits, not only to have introduced the following sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach into the Concert-Hall, but also to have made them loved by the great public. They were almost unknown before Joachim played them with his grand art of interpretation, and brought out all the beauties of this magnificent music. Some parts of these sonatas had been played in public by certain violinists before Joachim’s time, but as the spirit and the technique of these works were quite strange to the performers, the interpretation made a ridiculous impression on the audience. Any success was made quite impossible on account of the want of knowledge in the performers. Then came Joachim and his rendering was a revelation. How be played, and interpreted these sonatas is so well-known, that it is not necessary to mention it. When I completed my studies at the Berliner Hochschule under Joachim’s direction, the study of these sonatas formed one of the most important parts of his teaching. Joachim used the very excellent edition by Ferdinand David, based on Bach’s manuscript, to be found in the Royal Library in Berlin. All the same Joachim changed a great deal in this edition, with regard to the manner of playing, bowing, fingering and marks of interpretation, and I kept to all the alterations made by him. I very often had the opportunity of hearing Joachim play these works at concerts as well as during his classes, and so I was able to observe the fineness of his interpretation down to the smallest detail. As I am publishing the standard works of violin literature in connection with my own teaching, it was a special pleasure to me to revise these Sonatas — which I consider one of the most important works written for the violin — in such a manner, that no doubt may be left as to the best and easiest way of mastering the great and unusual difficulties which they contain. I hope to show by this to all young violin-artists, to whom the study of the following sonatas cannot be too strongly recommended — a sure way to a really perfect and beautiful rendering of the same.