Sayaka Shoji BACH & REGER Works for Violin Solo

The winner of the 1999 Paganini Competition at the age of 16, Sayaka Shoji isn’t merely a superb technician, she’s a deeply engaging performer who punches above her weight. The richly resonant, spirited sound that the diminutive young violinist produces with her 1729 “Recamier” Stradivarius is impressive and so, too, is the poetic delicacy of her phrasing.

Clearly she relishes the solo violin repertoire but she’s hardly the first to pair works for solo violin by Bach and Reger. Jennifer Koh did so most recently in 2005 (Cedille). Nor has Shoji recorded Reger’s Op 117 in its entirety, as has Renate Eggebrecht (Troubadisc). She has chosen three pairs of works, to draw attention to the influence of Bach on Reger, of which the most telling must be the magnificent Chaconnes: where Reger provides a gymnastic display, Bach creates music of the highest order. Like so many modern players, Shoji makes little attempt to differentiate them stylistically despite the two centuries that separate them.

“Bach and Reger”: that’s the order in which one would incline to think of them. Gilles Cantagrel, who wrote the booklet-notes for this disc, does too. Why, then, does Mirare place each of the pairs in the reverse order? Are we meant to reflect on the Reger we’ve heard as we listen to the Bach that follows? Reger, for all his contrapuntal skill and imaginative harmony, is never going to win hearts and minds; and anyway, Bach makes you forget everything else you’ve ever heard so the battle is lost almost immediately! It might have been better to devote one disc to Bach and one to Reger.

Nevertheless, Shoji emerges as a formidable musician armed with a superb instrument, able to draw on huge reserves of stamina and the unflinching equal of anything thrown at her. The world is her oyster. (Julie Anne Sadie / Gramophone)