Yehudi Menuhin was still in his teens when he made the first complete recordings of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for HMV. While Menuhin remade the cycle twice in adulthood, he never surpassed this remarkable youthful achievement, at least from a technical standpoint. His tone is richly varied in nuance and color, and occasional lapses in intonation have more to do with limited editing capabilities in the 78 era than Menuhin’s marksmanship. Each and every movement bespeaks a mature, essentially instinctive artist at work. Menuhin studied with Adolf Busch and Georges Enescu, two disparate yet equally authoritative Bachians, and the young violinist fuses Busch’s focused purity with Enescu’s more volatile, dark-hued expressive palette in an organic, individual manner.
Compared to EMI’s previous CD issue (on CHS7 63035-2), this latest transfer seems boosted in the midrange, while Menuhin’s high-register work sometimes distorts at loud moments. You get a more cogent sense of how Menuhin’s sonority projected in the studio 60-plus years ago, but I prefer the warmer, less strident LP transfers once available on EMI Treasury EX769377-1. I mention this LP issue mainly because it included the 1929 C major Sonata recording, made when Menuhin was 13. It’s looser and more technically secure and spontaneous than the 1934 remake here, but lacks the latter’s rapt concentration and richer polyphonic dimension. Anyone interested in the fruits of Menuhin’s early career should get to know these milestone performances.
