Noé Inui
CD Project
CD Project
brief information
They are seen as a touchstone for every young violinist: Johann Sebastian Bach’s six sonatas and partitas for solo violin, BWV 1001-1006. It is not for nothing that Yehudi Menuhin once called them the “Old Testament” of all violin playing.
At the age of four, Noé Inui (born in Brussels in 1985 to Japanese and Greek parents) began playing the violin after his father gave an enthusiastic account of a concert by Henryk Szeryng. This Polish-Mexican violinist and teacher recorded the entire cycle of solo violin works BWV 1001-1006 twice: in 1955 (still in mono) and once more in 1967 in a seminal recording that has since been regarded as a benchmark. And it was this recording that Noé Inui’s father used to put on during their many car journeys together and that engraved itself deeply on Inui’s memory.
In the text accompanying Inui’s new double album, “Sei Solo”, which is being issued in July 2026 on Ars Production, he writes: “Recording Bach’s solo violin works would be a milestone for any violinist. My goal was not only to achieve that milestone but also to show how a balance can be found between historically-informed performance practice and modern violin playing.”
In some of the movements of this partita (No. 3), he played using what is known as ‘jeu inégal’” and gives the music a swing feel, similar to modern jazz. Noé Inui departs from conventions and has produced what might even become a contemporary reference recording.
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