The idea behind this release is the intriguing one‚ that by covertly slipping into his works snippets of Lutheran chorale tunes‚ Bach was offering hints as to those pieces’ hidden meanings. It is a difficult theory to challenge without being as knowledgeable as Helga Thoene‚ the Bach scholar on whose investigations it is based‚ and I am certainly not. But while the sceptic will doubtless consider that the nature of most Lutheran chorale melodies is such that one might well recognise bits of them in any number of pieces (especially when the note values can be changed)‚ the more accepting cannot fail to be impressed by the detail with which Thoene has developed her thesis. The result – elucidated in her booklet article – is a conceptual reading of the three Partitas for solo violin which sees them as representative respectively of Christmas‚ Easter and Pentecost‚ or in other words birth‚ death and rebirth. What this disc sets out to do is to take the Second Partita and turn its notional Easter connotation of ‘in Christo morimur’ (in Christ we die) into an audible one by interspersing its five movements with relevant verses and fragments from the chorales in question‚ suitably paschal numbers such as Christ lag in Todesbanden and Jesu‚ Deine Passion. Most fascinatingly of all‚ though‚ the great final Chaconne – a piece thought to have moving extra significance as a tombeau for Bach’s first wife – is played twice‚ the second time with the Hilliard Ensemble adding the chorale quotations to the texture. This is not the first time this last has been done – lutenist José Miguel Moreno has already recorded the Chaconne in transcription with the chorale tunes superimposed by Emma Kirkby and Carlos Mena (Glossa‚ 3/99) – but with a Baroque violin and a four­part vocal ensemble the new recording could‚ I suppose‚ claim to be slightly more ‘authentic’. Performed with solemn feeling in a sepulchral acoustic‚ it is also more objectively beautiful‚ though by the same token less intimate and heartfelt. Christoph Poppen plays with secure agility and a vibrant tone‚ bringing drama to the Sarabande and vigour to the Gigue‚ and shaping a satisfying range of moods in the Chaconne‚ grippingly hushed in the long arpeggio passage and joyously excited in the big fanfares. The Hilliard Ensemble sing with appropriately funereal dignity. No one would pretend that this project represents anything that Bach would ever have heard in performance‚ but the thought of those fleeting‚ ghostly chorale fragments being something he could have heard in his head is one that is hard to resist. And in the end‚ when the mind has cleared itself of musicology‚ this is above all one of those increasingly rare things – a moving and intelligently programmed disc that is effective from beginning to end.