Autofx Suites

For all the celebrations to mark the tercentenary of Purcell’s death last year (1995), his keyboard music has remained very much in the shadow of his works for the theatre and Church; yet the simplicity and grace of these more intimate pieces make them immediately appealing. Several of them are, in fact, transcriptions of earlier vocal works, and therein lies the key to their interpretation. Of the two performers, Olivier Baumont is the more flamboyant, invariably choosing faster tempi than Sophie Yates, and playing with fluidity, panache and humour. But Yates’s guileless approach really captures the music’s ingenuousness, even if she occasionally sounds a little too strait-laced. Her harpsichord (a copy by Andrew Garlich of an instrument made in 1681 by Jean-Antoine Vaudry, now in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum) could hardly be better suited to the music, with its sweet, warm sound, beautifully reproduced by the Chandos engineers, who don’t make the all too frequent mistake of recording the instrument too close. Baumont’s harpsichord has a sharper tang, and he also uses a virginals for the Grounds and individual lessons. Both artists have much to offer, and the final choice will depend on whether you prefer your Purcell plain (Yates) or piquant (Baumont).

Pieter Wispelwey - JS Bach - 6 Suites For Cello Solo (2012) [2CD+DVD] {EPR-Classic}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 736 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 344 Mb
DVD9 -> 2.73 Gb | All Regions | NTSC 16:9 | Dolby AC3, 2 ch / Dolby AC3, 6 ch
Subs: English, Nederlands, Deutsch, Francais | ~ 52h | ISO Image
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 152 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2012 EPR-Classic / Evil Penguin Records Classic | 2012 EPRC 0012
Classical / Chamber Music / Cello

OK, are you ready for something completely different? From someone who has already recorded two complete sets of Bach's six suites for solo cello, BWV 1007-1012, no less? Where to begin? Dutch historical-performance specialist Pieter Wispelwey disregards the long performance tradition associated with these six suites, which seem like cousins to Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin but are actually quite different in character (there are no sonatas, for one thing). Even players of the Baroque cello sometimes seem to have Pablo Casals' magisterial recordings in their heads, but Casals is not in the building at all for these readings. They seem to rest on three principles.

Combined, Prokofiev’s three suites from Romeo include about half of the score. Still, most conductors who want to give us a full CD (or even a full LP) of Romeo pick their own extracts from the complete ballet instead of stringing together the suites. That’s probably at least partly because they don’t share Prokofiev’s preferences when it comes to favorite moments—but it’s also because, as written, the suites are organized for musical rather than narrative coherence, and thus provide little sense of the play’s dramatic trajectory. One way around the second of these issues, of course, is to reorder the suites: that’s, for instance, what Mitropoulos does with selections from the more popular First and Second. Here Andrew Litton pushes that idea to its limit, giving us all 20 movements of the three suites “in the order the music appears in the ballet score.”

Of course, the listener can tell the Handel Suites played by Andrei Gavrilov from the Handel Suites played by Sviatoslav Richter. Gavrilov's Suites are superbly played, thoughtfully performed, and persuasively interpreted. Richter's Suites, however, are supremely well played, penetratingly performed, and profoundly interpreted. Gavrilov's Suites are among the best recordings of the Suites ever made, catching the works' playfulness and seriousness, their sense of intimacy, and their sense of entertainment.

It was with three of Bach’s cello suites, transcribed for the viola, that Maxim Rysanov made his début on BIS in 2010. The Sunday Times had one reservation: ‘Rysanov’s recording of Bach’s suites is near perfection; the only flaw being that he did not perform all six.’ With the present disc that flaw is now being rectified, and the set is complete.

The discovery of music manuscripts from the estate of composer and music journalist Johann Mattheson in Armenia has been the cause of great excitement for fanciers of the German Baroque – here, finally, is the opportunity to get to know this friend of Handel and Bach whose written words are so eloquent and informative, yet whose music has proven so elusive. Nevertheless, first things first – Brazilian-born harpsichordist Cristano Holtz makes the first comprehensive recording of a Mattheson set that has been available all along in Ramée's Johann Mattheson: Suites, namely the set of 12 harpsichord suites Mattheson published in England in 1714 and in Germany a little later. "Comprehensive" should not be taken to mean "complete"; this 75-minute disc contains a little less than half the set, with four suites presented in excerpted form. Purists may cry foul, but the full set of 12 suites would probably last about three hours in performance, and one is thankful to Ramée for restricting the release to a single disc and highlighting the good parts.

Nobody knows why Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six suites for solo cello. Nor does anybody know how it came about that the suites were soon afterwards consigned to oblivion and more than a century before a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy discovered a worn copy of the score in a second-hand bookstore store in Bar- celona. For the next 11 years Pablo Casals practiced them every day. Finally, in 1936, he entered London’s Abbey Road studios to record the second and third suites for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Bach’s cello suites have become a rite of passage for all aspiring cellists.