Partita for Solo Violin No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004

About the work

The second of the six sonatas and partitas: four conventional dance movements, then the monument — the Chaconne. A four-bar bass pattern, sixty-four variations, some fifteen minutes, an entire harmonic universe carried on four strings. Busoni turned it into a piano epic; Brahms wrote that had he composed it, the experience would have driven him mad. Most scholars believe Bach wrote it after the death of his first wife.

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