Nathan Cole

There are violinists who are graceful dancers on the instrument, casting a spell over their listeners; and there are pugnacious players compelled to show the music who’s boss. With his first solo recording, Nathan Cole falls into the second category. The member of the Chicago Symphony’s first-violin section argues a strong case that he’s more than a nameless face in the crowd.

Cole brings vigorous force to Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor, which opens the disc. A similar impulse animates the works that follow: Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin and four of Augusta Read Thomas’s solo violin pieces. It works better in the Bartók and Thomas, which grow from fragmentary building blocks, but his punch is a welcome break from more sinewy, lithe interpretations.

At a time when downloads of single movements are becoming more popular, Cole’s recording goes against the grain by rewarding listening to the entire album, straight through. Bach’s stateliness and lyrical beauty pave the way agreeably for the muscular Hungarian outbursts of Bartók, and the wild torrents of the solo Sonata end up preparing the ear for Thomas’s even more jagged phrases. Yes, phrases, because Cole manages the trick, rare in a musician who doesn’t specialize in contemporary music, of finding the lyricism in Thomas’s brief works. He can do that without betraying his forceful nature, and that’s no mean feat.