Pianist Glenn Gould died on October 4, 1982. As a memorial to this amazing musician, we have for you today the piano and violin sonata by Johann Sebastian Bach, in which the violin is played by Yehudi Menuhin.
The sonata for violin and harpsichord in C minor, BWV 1017 is stylistically-speaking the most unusual and forward-looking. While its four movements are plainly of the traditional church sonata type, two of them especially would have turned early eighteenth-century heads.
Opening a four-movement sonata with a Siciliano, as Bach does here, is certainly unusual, if not necessarily groundbreaking; the swaying sicilienne rhythm is given to the violin while the harpsichord ponders arpeggios. The content of the Adagio third movement is also so unusual for its time that one cannot but wonder at Bach’s inventiveness.
The remaining two movements — the two quick movements — are hardly less impressive. The second movement (Allegro) is the weightiest of all the violin/harpsichord sonata quick movements, while the finale (also Allegro) is the kind of dense, quasi-fugal binary movement we might expect.
Here are Yehudi Menuhin and Glenn Gould to play this music for you:
