“You play Bach your way. And I'll play Bach his way” Wanda Landowska, an arrogant Polish harpsichord player, is alleged to have told someone. What do we know about what Bach wanted? We know with his music he was keen on texture, on structure, on harmony and on rhythm. We know from his frequent borrowings, transpositions and re-writings that the actual sound of his music had a lesser place; an oboe might replace a violin, a bassoon might replace a clarinet, the prelude to the third partita for solo violin would turn up as an organ solo in a cantata. So when it comes to the sonatas and partitas for solo violin: what would Johann Sebastian have expected of the player?

My feeling (unlike Landowska I don't know these things) is that Bach would have expected players to stick to the text, to play all the notes … and to use all the craft, skills and technique in their armoury to make the notes come alive and to arouse interest and admiration. I think that Bach would have been disappointed at many “baroque” performances, and also by the many who play his notes accurately and well but without bringing anything to the party.

I greatly admired Jascha Heifetz's playing on a recent re-listen. I have really enjoyed Lara St. John's two CDs of the six works this evening. Lara brings love, spirit, enthusiasm and an extensive palette of bowing, dynamics and colouring so that the music is constantly alive. Bach, I feel, would be happy. Lara does not worry about how Bach would have played the pieces; she just uses the scores to show what a violin can do. In my personal pantheon of desert island recordings, Heifetz and St. John are now neck-to-neck in the final strait.