Johann Sebastian Bach 3 Suites For Cello Solo (transcription For Horn)

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 Barcelona. 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.

Made at the age of 50, this is Pieter Wispelwey's third recording of the Cello Suites by J.S. Bach, and in very many ways his most impressive. The big difference in this case is that the cello is equipped with gut strings and tuned to 392 Hz. This results in tuning roughly a half-tone lower than usual, and with lower tension in the strings this has a greater effect than you might imagine. The low tension strings makes the way the music 'speaks' very different, and this is articulated in peformances which have a strong narrative feel and less emphasis on the lyrical side of the music.

Made at the age of 50, this is Pieter Wispelwey's third recording of the Cello Suites by J.S. Bach, and in very many ways his most impressive. The big difference in this case is that the cello is equipped with gut strings and tuned to 392 Hz. This results in tuning roughly a half-tone lower than usual, and with lower tension in the strings this has a greater effect than you might imagine. The low tension strings makes the way the music 'speaks' very different, and this is articulated in peformances which have a strong narrative feel and less emphasis on the lyrical side of the music.

The poetry and radiance of Bachs cello suites (BWV 1007-1012) are transfigured in these remarkable interpretations by Kim Kashkashian on viola, offering a different kind of somberness, a different kind of dazzlement as annotator Paul Griffiths observes. One of the most compelling performers of classical and new music, Kashkashian has been hailed by The San Francisco Chronicle as an artist who combines a probing, restless musical intellect with enormous beauty of tone. An ECM artist since 1985, she approaches Bach s music with the same commitment as revealed in her other solo recordings, the legendary Hindemith sonatas album and the widely acclaimed (and Grammy-winning) account of Kurtág and Ligeti.

The personal story of the cello played braced against the shoulder (violoncello da spalla) began when Sergey Malov first listened to a vinyl recording of Bach's cello suites played by the legendary Pablo Casals from his father's collection. Later on, when listening to the recordings he could not get rid of the feeling that this light and dancing music does not fit that well with such a heavy big instrument as a cello. Although perhaps he just wanted to play these amazing pieces himself. Malov was dreaming about playing them authentically. He had no idea though what that authentic way was or how he could place such a huge bass instrument on his shoulder.

J.S. Bach’s genius is universally revered by music lovers, and a significant part of his output was in transcriptions of his own work, a tradition kept alive in Eleonor Bindman’s piano versions of the Six Suites for Solo Cello. Bindman has avoided embellishing these iconic pieces, preserving the intriguing ambiguities in Bach’s implied harmonies and savouring their expressive qualities through the baritone register of a marvellous Bösendorfer piano. These admirably accurate transcriptions reveal the mysterious mathematical grace and flexibility of structure that makes Bach’s art so organic and eternal.

Cellist Marko Ylönen has recorded a beautiful double album containing Bach’s six suites for solo cello. On the album, Ylönen wants to emphasize the way in which the different series work together in a dialogue. That is why he does not play them in their numerical order, but creates an experience that takes the listener from the world of passion in the fifth series to the joyful tones of the last sixth series. The clear musical structure and the affect of the musical characters and gestures combine in Ylönen’s performance. His interpretation of the Bach suites tells the listener something invaluable, touching and timeless.

An eminent interpreter of Vivaldi, Giuliano Carmignola has always had a great affinity with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, as can be heard in his landmark recordings of the Violin Sonatas with Andrea Marcon (2002), the Violin Concertos with Concerto Köln (2014, Diapason d'or), and the Sonatas & Partitas (2018), which Gramophone judged to be "a first-rate choice among the recordings of these works on period instruments, despite the competition”. Carmignola’s latest project took shape during the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and offers a new and sometimes experimental reading of Bach’s Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso, in which he highlights new details and exalts the choreatic character and the brilliance of many of the suites’ movements.

Bach aficionados will be delighted to find again Wieland Kuijken in this reference album coupling the Cello Suites and Gamba Sonatas (with his son Piet), originally released in 2004 and shortly afterwards out of print. As Wieland Kuijken confesses in his interesting text, he laboured over the Cello Suites with his instrument (credited to Andrea Amati) for 30 years before eventually deciding that his interpretation was ready for this compelling recording: ‘Today more than ever, I think it is a whole lifetime that one puts into these works, regardless of whatever one might say, whatever one might know.’