On her new recording Tutta Sola (All Alone) Rachel Podger interprets the music of twelve Baroque composers incredibly intimately. The title Tutta Sola means ‘all alone’. J.S. Bach wrote ‘sei solo’ on his title page, which can be interpreted as ‘I am alone’, or ‘all alone’. Baroque violinist Rachel Podger values the concentration that you need to have for a solo recital. She believes that there’s something incredibly intimate about it, nothing quite like it. For this new disc, Rachel Podger put together a program of selected solo violin pieces, preludes, dances and fugal movements from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of twelve different composers. As per her philosophy that just about everything ‘starts with Bach’, so does this album. It is the world premiere recording of J.S. Bach’s famous organ Toccata and Fugue in a specially commissioned arrangement by Chad Kelly for solo violin in A minor.

“When you’re recording a solo album, you’re in a space, with your instrument, the composer, microphones, and there’s no-one else there. It’s really special and hard to describe. It feels like an honor in a way, to fill that space with my violin. During the recording sessions of Tutta Sola it happened to me multiple times that my dear producer Jonathan Freeman-Attwood or recording engineer Jared Sacks of Channel Classics would suddenly say something over the speaker, and I would be slightly shocked – “Oh right! You are here too!” – from having been in such deep concentration. I felt so close to the composers. There’s nothing quite like it, and it’s a privilege.”

Rachel Podger – Violin