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

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.

• Nathan Milstein

  Reference

  Deutsche Grammophon · 1975

  The Chaconne runs fifteen minutes and its structure matters more than its mood. Milstein holds the pulse throughout, and the sixty-four variations come out as architecture rather than monologue.

• Rachel Podger

  Period instruments

  Channel Classics · 1999

  A baroque bow, chords rolled rather than forced. It is the first time the Chaconne's bass line is genuinely audible as a line.