“…Begelman’s thoughts on Bach meanwhile come not from the (beautifully engineered studio) acoustics of his surroundings but from his own inner obsessings over the private personality who produced these masterpieces. ‘I would like to know what he was thinking about, serenely sipping his beer in the evening’, he muses in his booklet notes. ‘What grief and despair did he experience at the loss of his child? Yet, strict and reserved, Bach looks down at me from the famous Haussmann portrait, barring my way into his inner world’; and if you’ve never had similar imaginings yourself, Begelman’s subsequent readings should lead you down that dream track. Full, strong and vibrantly toned, technically superb and beautifully ornamented, these are fresh and immensely human-sounding in contrast to the divine quality we hear from Midori. Dance movements energetically propulse forwards, never losing sight of the rhythmic metre even when giving it a playful tweak. Then there are the truly introvert moments. The vulnerable nakedness of the C major Sonata’s Adagio, for instance, with its vibrato-less piano, notes barely sustained, all of which makes the subsequent fugue’s direct tone and tiny injection of vibrato carry especial power. Then there’s the famous D minor Chaconne, because from the moment Begelman’s bow bites the strings for his clipped and punchy opening chords you realise that this is not an interpretation with heavenly aspirations but one articulating the painful buzzings of a human mind not remotely at rest; if this was indeed an epitaph to Bach’s deceased wife, Begelman hasn’t given us spiritual grieving acceptance but, instead, ‘why?’…”

Charlotte Gardner, www.gramophone.co.uk