Bach is the ultimate goal, this is where everything starts and everything ends. His music brings you closer to your own spirit, even to analyzing your own spirit and soul. It has an incredible serenity.
If people think that a choral or an Adagio, a Cantilena produces this miracle, I would say that even fast movements, a Presto or a quick Allegro, can make you feel more cheerful, more secure, more optimistic. A quiet force emanates from his very personality and makes you feel safe. You do not have to look for Bach, Bach finds you. Bach represents a very large, wide range of human beings, pure human beings, in humility before God and the creation. A Bach fugue is the road to an enchanted world with many different voices, with much trickery.
It is the main subject, which always emerges safe and sound in spite of conflicts or - more often than not - even dissonant sounds. Bach's harmonies are incredibly courageous, very much ahead of his time. Bach's music can also serve as a didactic element. A Bach treatment is very useful for artists, musicians, performers and for everybody. When I don't feel like playing scales, the fact of playing, maybe in a slower tempo, a Bach Allegro or a Fugue, or even a Presto, gives my fingers the strength, the flexibility and the firmness that is required, and it gives my bow the flexibility.
If you play a Bach Allegro slowly, you have all the chances in the world that your muscles get warm and then you are in a better position to perform anything. Every two or three years I am coming back to Bach, trying to rethink and restudy his works and to find out whether what I think is right or wrong.
The Urtext is the basic of everything I am doing while playing works by Bach. The question is to find out which way you get closer to the truth and yet, you must take into consideration that the instrument you are playing is not entirely the same as those played at Bach's time.
