The Sonatas And Partitas For Violin Solo

"On every level - aesthetic, emotional, technical - Holloway's interpretations are deeply persuasive. His exceptionally clean, malleable articulation and the rich, burnished tone of his baroque violin - the bottom string possesses an almost viola-like lustre - ensures that from the very opening Adagio of Sonata No. 1, the brilliance of Bach's counterpoint rings out with an unusual clarity. … This is playing that fizzes with intelligence, combining intensity, percipience and drama in equal measure."
Peter Quinn, International Record Review

"It's the rare performer who can make you hear familiar fare as if it were new, but John Holloway is one. On this CD, the British violinist, a leader of the early-music movement, plays Bach's solo violin works as if he were carving them out of a heavy block of wood, and the result is at once fresh and alien. … He digs deep into each double-stop and melodic phrase, producing a series of gritty, laborious and heavy-toned renditions. … Each individual movement stands out in a new and provocative light."
Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

"Holloway is one of today's most accomplished exponents of the Baroque violin. Although finicky, the gut-strung instrument varies from its modern counterpart in its subtlety, intimacy and, he insists, appropriateness for Bach's music. The British musician stakes his claim on a wonderful new ECM album of the six solos. … Instead of going back to Bach's music from the future - that is, from the perspective of the Romantic/modern repertoire of most concert violinists - Holloway approaches Bach in a line with his Austro-German predecessors Biber and Schmelzer, whose music he has also recorded to acclaim."
Bradley Bambarger, The Star-Ledger

"In these fine, carefully shaped virtuoso readings Holloway demonstrates above all, perhaps, two things. First, that these really are momentous pieces, as much an apotheosis of stylized dance forms and of sophisticated contrapuntal forms as anything else Bach wrote. (The fugues are particularly impressive.) And second, that the baroque violin is capable of an amazing variety of sound colours, from the sweet and delicate to the resonantly trumpeting."
Stephen Pettitt, Sunday Times