Leonidas Kavakos - Bach Violin Concertos

For his latest album, violinist Leonidas Kavakos goes back to Bach - the composer whose music has inspired him for decades.

In 2022, he released an acclaimed recording of the composer’s Partitas and Sonatas for Solo Violin on Sony Classical - his first release including music by Bach. Now Kavakos turns to Bach’s four solo violin concertos - varied and vivid orchestral works from the first half of the 18th century in which the composer combined the best of German and Italian instrumental styles.

Having experimented with baroque and classical bows, Kavakos uses a bow modeled on a François Tourte example from the early 1800s, together with his 1734 Willemotte Stradivarius. Bach’s four violin concertos communicate strikingly different moods. Bach’s slow movements, says Kavakos, “carry us to the place where every human soul would love to be.”