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The cello suites are, in comparison, consistently "cello music"; they are idiomatic to the instrument. With the violin sonatas and partitas, Bach was intentionally writing in styles that were unidiomatic, and making it work (usually). The three Adagios off the top of each Sonata are clearly "I am writing lute music, except for the violin"-- they would theoretically work better on lute, but that's not really the point. The C-major Adagio in particular is one of Bach's greatest feats of stylistic synthesis, in my opinion, it's both "lute music" and "violin music" and there is no other piece like it in the repertoire.
The Fugues that follow those Adagios are "keyboard music". I hold the less-popular opinion that these Fugues are bad music and don't really work. The g-minor one is amazing but the a-minor and C-major do not sound like music, they sound like a failed experiment. I would argue that all three fugues would sound better on a keyboard instrument, but Bach wrote oceans of fugues and these aren't top-drawer; why bother adapting them? (The g-minor one is excepted, it's an amazing thing.)
The chaconne is an outlier. It's doubtless one of the most brutally beautiful things that Bach wrote, but the 'experiment' of "polyphonic violin writing" is less interesting than the musical material itself. I think it is the movement of the entire opus that lends itself most readily to adaptation.
The rest of the work is often adapted-- I hear the E-major prelude on guitar as often as I do on violin-- but it's violin music, you can borrow it but it's not yours
― flamboyant goon tie included, Sunday, 9 January 2022 14:31 (two years ago) link
Isn't the struggle and harshness of playing chordal music on the violin part of the point, though? Confession: I've never played it all. I sight-read the whole thing at half tempo (sometimes less) last night.
Prelude from Cello Suite 1 (BWV1007) one of my favourite guitar pieces.
― treat the gelignite tenderly for me (Sund4r), Sunday, 9 January 2022 20:23 (two years ago) link
Ultimately I think Bach was testing the limits of violinistic technique and certain movements cross a line into "this is too difficult to deliver anything really but accuracy" territory. The a-minor fugue, like, I enjoy Hadelich's and Shunsuke Sato's renditions but it's just too astronomically difficult in its writing for even the most brilliant of A-listers
― flamboyant goon tie included, Sunday, 9 January 2022 22:15 (two years ago) link