When he was a boy, Kodaly taught himselfwith virtually no professional guidance-to play the piano, the violin and the cello, partly in order to take part in domestic music-making (his father, a station master employed by the Hungarian state railways, was an amateur violinist, his mother sang and played the piano), and his chamber music for strings all dates from relatively early in his working life, between 1905 and 1918. It includes three major works that feature the cello in a virtuoso capacity: the Sonata for cello and piano, Op. 4(1909-10), the Duo for violin and cello, Op. 7 (1914) and the Sonata for solo cello, Op. 8 (1915).
In the '80s there were those listeners who thought that Heinrich Schiff might redeem cello performance practice from fatal beauty and lethal elegance. Aside from the burly and brawny Rostropovich, more and more cellists were advocating a performance style whose ideals were perfect intonation and graceful phrasing. In some repertoire, say, Fauré, these are perfectly legitimate goals. In other repertoire, Beethoven and Brahms, say, it is a terrible mistake. In Bach's Cello Suites, as the fay and fragile Yo-Yo Ma recordings make clear, it was a terminal mistake. Not so in Schiff's magnificently muscular 1984 recordings of the suites: Schiff's rhythms, his tempos, his tone, his intonation, and especially his interpretations were anything but fay or fragile. In Schiff's performance, Bach's Cello Suites are not the neurasthenic music of a composer supine with dread and despair in the dark midnight of the soul, but the forceful music of a mature composer in full control of himself and his music.
This set includes two of the rarest and hardest to find of all recordings: the 1958-59 version of the Bach Cello Suites by Janos Starker – the one everyone says his later recordings cannot match – and the extremely beautiful performance of Bach's unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas – the one that Japanese collectors pay 3-digit dollar prices for – in outstanding EMI Digital Re-Masterings.
Viele der bekanntesten Melodien von Johann Sebastian Bach stammen aus den ausdruckstarken langsamen Sätzen seiner Konzerte, Suiten und Sonaten. Aus Anlass von "330 Jahre Bach" erscheint nun die Doppel-CD Bach Adagio. Sie lädt dazu ein, Ruhezonen im Alltag zu entdecken und sie zur Entschleunigung zu nutzen. Die reichen Klangwelten, die der Barock-Meister erschuf, animieren zum Träumen und Entspannen. Mit den renommierten Bach-Interpreten wie John Eliot Gardiner, András Schiff, Friedrich Gulda, Albrecht Mayer, Janine Jansen, Riccardo Chailly, Christopher Hogwood und vielen mehr.
Dutch cellist Mayke Rademakers performing the suites for cello solo by Bach, alternated with cello works by Gubaidulina, Britten, Kurtág, Penderecki and Schnittke. According to performer Mayke Rademakers, an authentic listening experience is, despite what we would all like to believe, simply not possible. For that reason she has strived to make a connection with today's world, by pairing the suites with works by contemporary composers, setting them in an unusual and sharp perspective.
This debut album opens with cellist Taeguk Mun - winner of the 2014 Pablo Casals International Cello Competition and the 2016 János Starker Foundation Award - playing Bach's Suite for Solo Cello No 1. He is then joined by the pianist Chi Ho Han, another multi-award-winning musician from South Korea, for Beethoven's Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Major and short pieces by Schumann, Schubert, Rubinstein and Pablo Casals.