Recorded in the richly sonorous Church of Santa Eufemia in the fishing village of Bermeo on the Cantabrian coast of Spain,
Gilles Colliard's performances of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas are unbelievably good. Although his tone is warm with more than a hint of vibrato and his technique is smooth with just a bit of sharpness,
Colliard's playing is as natural as it is passionate, as concentrated as it is expansive. His performances are as much lived and felt as they are considered and contemplated with luminous depths, numinous heights, and, when the music calls for it, profoundly human transcendence. While the pantheon of great recordings of the Sonatas and Partitas -- the
Grumiaux, the
Milstein, the
Heifetz, the
Szeryng, the
Kuijken -- is not unduly disturbed, it does have to make room for this one. Like the Spanish EMEC label,
Gilles Colliard will be unfamiliar to an international audience, but with this recording, both the artist and the label should soon become much better known.