It is not easy to hold the attention of an audience for one and a half hours with just a solo violin. But not the least feature of the Bach recital by Alina Ibragimova at the Assembly Room in Bath this evening was that, by the time she reached the third partita for solo violin, and the end of the concert, we were still hanging on every note she played. She has an extraordinary palette of colours and dynamics (including the famous real pianissimo about which I have complained when it is recorded or listened to off-air). Ibragimova's pianissimi are breathtaking (and her fortissimi shook the Assembly Room).

I have never admired Bach's chaconne (second partita) so much as in the performance this evening; Johann Sebastian might even have written it with Ibragimova in mind, so entrancing and absorbing was her playing. At the end of the piece, was I clapping Bach, or Ibragimova? She has a rare gift, in Bach, of being able to formulate each movement as a whole, and then to formulate all the movements into one work. I would never dream of questioning her tempi, since they all add up to one satisfactory whole in the end. She has obviously thought about these works a lot and they are obviously close to her heart.

The Assembly Room was packed with 600-700 people, and it was a good audience that knew when to clap and when not to, when to clap very enthusiastically, and when just enthusiastically. And no Americans, so no standing ovations, thank goodness.

Criticisms? Not much, for this concert. She might have done better to end the concert with the second partita – and thus the chaconne – rather than with the lighter-weight third. And I did not care much for her new hairstyle; too boyish. But, from row “T” in the Assembly Room, much of Miss Ibragimova, apart from the superb violin playing, was mainly a blur. How such a diminutive young woman can produce such an extraordinary range of sounds from Bach's polyphony makes the imagination boggle.