Are a beautiful sound and a warm, singing tone as important to you as intelligent, stylish interpretation in Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas? If so, you probably won’t sympathise with Gidon Kremer’s seeming determination to bypass his instrument in pursuit of musical truths, nor the hard-hitting, raw, squeezed-out quality of many notes above the stave and loud broken chords (although Kremer’s intonation is, for the most part, absolutely dead-on). The utterly unprettified G minor and C major Sonatas’ Adagios, for example, are brisker and grittier than what one usually hears.

While many treat the B minor Partita’s opening Allemande as an expansive aria, Kremer’s headlong tempo, emphatic double-dotting and pronounced dynamic contrasts realise the music’s French ouverture implications, making it easy to slip into the following Double movement unnoticed. Following a dazzling sprint through the Presto Double Kremer reduces the Sarabande and Double to a studied and rather precious whisper, so different from the young Julia Fischer’s eloquence and directness, among recent solo Bach contenders.

Kremer shapes the three Sonatas’ fugues in large, dramatic arcs, intensified by subtle tempo fluctuations, although he does not voice the counterpoint or arpeggiate the broken chords with the varied timbres and articulations of James Ehnes. Kremer’s unusually soft playing of the D minor Chaconne’s most virtuoso passages convinces more than his dynamic exaggerations in bars 32-33. Similarly, the E major Partita’s archly phrased Gavotte and Rondeau contrast with Kremer’s imaginatively inflected, tough, driving dispatch of the Preludio.

With Kremer’s earlier solo Bach edition unavailable, his equally controversial yet more evolved (and better engineered) remakes offer ample food for thought, if not quite a first choice.