Bach: Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin

Nathan Milstein plays these magnificent pieces with patrician elegance, easily overcoming their all-but-insurmountable difficulties. His burnished tone has a warmth like that of mahogany, and his fine fingerwork and flawless bowing make for an assured connection of ideas. In the Chaconne to the D minor Partita--which can make even a very good violinist sound overmatched and inept--he zeroes in with the sort of concentration one usually sees in chess champions. Here, as elsewhere in the cycle, Milstein projects not only the music's emotive force, but Bach's grand architecture as well. And thanks to the "Originals" remastering, his sound is more burnished than ever. --Ted Libbey