Bach - Violin sonata in E minor BWV 1023 - Sato and Van Delft | Netherlands Bach Society

The violin gets straight down to business with a whirlwind of semiquavers in this Violin sonata in E minor, performed by Shunske Sato and Menno van Delft for All of Bach. It’s clear that one instrument is in the spotlight here, and it isn’t the harpsichord, as is often the case in Bach’s other surviving sonatas for violin and harpsichord (which we often refer to confusingly as violin sonatas). This four-part work with virtuoso violin part immediately raises the question of who Bach actually wrote it for. He is a candidate himself, as the violin was his very first instrument. Or could it have been written for Johann Georg Pisendel, the leading violinist of Central Germany at the time. The two men got to know each other in 1709, following which they had a long professional relationship, and were probably friends too, even when Bach settled in Leipzig and Pisendel was celebrating his triumph at the court in Dresden. Today, that is the home of the only source of this Violin Sonata in E minor; a few full pa