On 7 June 2026, violinist Christian Tetzlaff performed all six of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin at Wigmore Hall in London. Bringing these works together in a single concert highlights a challenge of both composition and performance: with just one instrument, Bach suggests several voices, makes harmonies audible and moves from dance to fugue.
The performance formed part of a festival organised to mark the 125th anniversary of the London venue. Its programme followed the order of the six works, brought together in a manuscript dated 1720: three sonatas alternating with three partitas. Radio France is offering a radio broadcast of the performance in November, several months after the concert.
Six works, three pairs
The sonatas BWV 1001, 1003 and 1005 alternate with the partitas BWV 1002, 1004 and 1006. This arrangement offers two complementary ways of structuring the music. The sonatas follow the church sonata form, with four movements that generally alternate between slow and fast. The partitas draw more on the dance suite, linking movements such as the allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue.
The third sonata is the one in C major, BWV 1005. It follows the Partita in D minor, BWV 1004, which includes the celebrated Chaconne, and precedes the Partita in E major, BWV 1006. The concert programme lists all six titles in this order, from the Sonata in G minor to the Partita in E major.
The dance forms are not merely historical labels. They give listeners a sense of movement and character, even if they are unfamiliar with the conventions of each dance. In the sonatas, the alternation between slow and fast organises the listening experience differently: a prelude may establish an expressive space before a fugue brings several musical lines into play.
Making several voices heard on a violin
The paradox of these pieces lies in their small forces. A violin cannot sustain several independent lines for long, as an ensemble could. Yet Bach writes in a way that makes polyphony perceptible—that is, several musical voices responding to one another or combining. The melody and the notes that outline the harmony must emerge from a single instrument.
The fugue makes this particularly clear. A theme passes from one voice to another and overlaps with itself, but the violinist has only four strings and two hands. Chords, changes of register and bow movements help bring the different layers into focus. The listener is invited to follow first the main line, then the responses around it.
This writing therefore calls for more than spectacular virtuosity. It requires the performer to make intelligible a musical architecture that is not embodied by several instruments. A single note may matter both for its place in a melodic phrase and for the harmonic tension it creates. Technical difficulty serves this clarity; it is not an end separate from the structure.
The Chaconne, at the heart of the Partita in D minor
The Partita BWV 1004 ends with a Chaconne, a substantial movement built on variations. A harmonic pattern or bass motif provides the foundation for a succession of transformations. The material returns, but each variation changes its rhythm, density or arrangement of voices.
In a work for solo violin, this principle raises a practical question: how can a sense of continuous progression be created with a single instrument and no accompaniment? The answer lies in the way the variations reshape what the ear has already heard. A familiar figure can take on new notes, expand or give more space to a line that had seemed secondary.
The Chaconne is therefore not merely a pinnacle of difficulty placed at the end of a partita. It encapsulates the concerns of the whole collection: making a structure perceptible, creating contrasts and giving breadth to music that relies on nothing but a violin. Its place in the programme on 7 June, in fourth position, put it after the first two pairs of works and before the third sonata.
A programme that tests endurance
Performing all six works in succession requires the performer to move from one form to another without changing instrument or partner. The sonatas demand that the balance of their movements be maintained while their fugues remain clear. The partitas shift the focus to dances and their sequences, with different characters and movements.
For listeners, the journey offers several ways in. They can follow the forms, pick out the return of a theme in a fugue or observe how a succession of variations transforms a motif. They can also compare the overall effect of the sonatas, more clearly divided into four movements, with that of the partitas, which are closer to a suite.
The programme announced by Wigmore Hall thus makes it possible to approach the complete set as a constructed whole rather than a mere accumulation of virtuoso pieces. In Bach, solo violin does not mean music reduced to a single line: the whole point is precisely to make the relationships between the voices audible within the limits of one instrument.
References
- France Musique, presentation of Christian Tetzlaff’s concert at Wigmore Hall
- Musicologie.org, introduction to Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin
Christian Tetzlaff at the Spannungen festival in 2025. Archive image, separate from the concert at Wigmore Hall.
