Bach Cello Suites Piano

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.

This recording represents the coming together of three giants: the immense Johann Sebastian Bach, the king of the piano Leopold Godowsky, and Stephen Paulello's sublime Opus 102 instrument.

Pablo Casals showed the world that Bach's solo cello suites were more than mere teaching exercises. Modern ears weaned on historically informed versions might flinch at Casals' tempo fluctuations and distensions of line. Yet his imposing personality, intense concentration, and penetrating musicianship transcend time. Seth Winner's revelatory transfers restore the warm overtones to Casals' cello missing from EMI's harsher remasterings.

The pianist Thomas Jarry here borrows the famous Cello Suites of Johann Sebastian Bach in an innovative reading at the piano. Harmony and counterpoint, reconstructed on a solid historical and musicological foundation, offer the listener the possibility of experiencing these legendary works in a new three-dimensional version. Dare to re-discover the complete Cello Suites, recorded on an exceptional Gaveau concert piano dating from 1953.