Bach Cello

A second recording of J.S. Bach’s 6 suites for solo cello Universal Music/Decca, after the first release for EMI in 2004.

Newly remastered from the original L'Oiseau Lyre tapes, a little-known Bach recording in the true French style. The modern phenomenon of the Cello Suites as a staple of any record collection may be laid at the feet of the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, whose HMV recording, released in 1939, belatedly placed the set alongside The Well-Tempered Clavier and the solo violin works as a cornerstone of Bach's instrumental output in the consciousness of listeners who could not play a note of his music. Another two decades elapsed before a new generation of cellists took up the mantle of Casals in the LP era. Among their select number was Jean-Max Clément, whose 1958 studio recording for L'Oiseau Lyre was released two years later. By then he had made a notable concerto appearance in London with Sir Thomas Beecham: 'His tone was very small indeed,' reported The Times, 'but it was of such rare beauty and refinement that we could have listened to him all night.'

“J. S. Bach’s Cello Suites are somehow hypnotic. An austere work, an instrument, a performer, a single voice and yet we begin to listen to them and are introduced into a path which inevitably leads us inwards, and makes us aware of our absolute solitude facing the universe and the unknown.

„Magie faszinierender Cellokünste“, „kontemplative Tiefe“, „Vorschein erfüllter ästhetischer Utopie“,
schrieb die „Süddeutsche Zeitung“ über das Cellospiel von David Stromberg.

The Six Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach are part of the Old Testament of cello literature. Every cellist who looks at the music senses immediately how naturally the notes are arranged around the strings of the instrument. Yet there are many questions and discussions about these ‘Suites a Violoncello Solo senza Basso’. Did Bach really write the music for cello, or for cello alone? When did he write this music – at the court of Cöthen or earlier?

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.

Guitarist Slava Grigoryan embarks on a major new recording series surveying the music of JS Bach, beginning with the beloved Cello Suites.

Slava Grigoryan’s acclaimed Bach journey continues with the second volume of the Cello Suites.

Every cellist of renown eventually faces up to the Everest of their repertoire, the solo Cello Suites of J.S. Bach. For Giovanni Sollima, this has been a work of many years in the making, as he explains in a booklet introduction.