Bach composed for chamber music in various instrumental configurations, but he also created works for solo instruments, among them violin and cello. What has survived are a set of multi movement suites for both. We have the violin music examples written in Bach’s own hand, and for cello in his hand and from the transcriptions of others.
“Bach’s unaccompanied violin and cello compositions epitomize virtuosity, and, on account of their singularity, to a degree even greater than his keyboard works of comparable demands. Both sets of solo pieces demonstrate Bach’s command of performing techniques but also his ability to bring into play, without even an accompanying bass part, dense counterpoint and refined harmony with distinctive and well-articulated rhythmic designs, especially in the dance movements.
Indeed, both collections create the maximum effect with a minimum of instrumental ‘tools.’ Once again, Bach the quintessential instrumentalist raises and redefines the technical standards by fully exploiting the idiomatic qualities of the violin and cello. Remarkably, the free improvisatory and strict imitative realizations of his sonata style movements and his suite (partita) dances with their rhythmic and textural flair reveal no deficiencies whatsoever when compared to the keyboard works of the same period.
Only a single source can be traced directly to the Weimar chamber music: a Fugue in G minor for violin and continuo, BWV 1026, in a copy made around 1714 by the Weimar town organist Johann Gottfried Walther. This oldest extant chamber composition by Bach is a sophisticated and highly virtuosic yet isolated single movement whose genesis and context remain obscure. Nevertheless, it’s lengthy double stop passages, other virtuosic devices, and the idiomatic treatment of the violin demonstrates Bach’s impressive technical accomplishments as a violinist and suggest that he continued to develop his violin technique. Moreover, it lends credence to a long held assumption that Bach began his work on the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, BWV 1001-1006, in Weimar. These works seem conceptually indebted to Johann Paul Westhoffs’ 1696 publication of solo violin partitas, the first of its kind, and since Westhoff, one of the preeminent violinists of his time, played in the Weimar court capelle until his death in 1705, Bach would have met him in 1703.”
Christoph Wolff; Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician, pages 133, 23,
BWV 1011 – Baroque Cello: Rainer Eudeikis
BWV 1004 – Baroque Violin : Sigiswald Kuijken