In the booklet notes accompanying his recordings of Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas, violinist Benjamin Schimd stresses the music’s harmonic richness as the basis of his interpretive agenda. My ears don’t agree. Rhythm is Schimd’s beat (all puns intended), and sometimes his undoing. The allegro and presto Sonata finales, for example, dance in your face and upside your head, with a steady pulse that never feels mechanical. But the clicktrack regularity Schmid imposes upon much of the D minor Chaconne trivializes the music’s agonizing tension and release. Schmid often will stretch a beat in order to accommodate all the notes in a broken chord–a gambit that throws each fugue’s rhythmic flow off kilter. And his short-breathed, vibrato-less opening slow movements to the Sonatas sound less “historically informed” than mousy and tentative. It’s clear, however, that Benjamin Schmid is a superb instrumentalist who happens to be a thinking musician. Perhaps this gifted 31-year-old violinist is still sorting out his relationship to these inexhaustible works. When he re-records them in, say, 10 years, I’ll be first in line to buy a copy.
