Bach Trnitatis

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.

Hermann Max and the Rheinische Kantorei set out on new paths toward the interpretation of Bach's motet cosmos. The present CD also includes the Motets BWV Anh. 159 because Bach scholarship has come to regard these works, long ascribed to Johann Christian Bach, as compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach as they clearly bear his musical signature.

Like his older brother Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach received his musical training from the most exacting of teachers, and there is no doubt that, with the experience of the Trio sonatas for organ and Das wohltemperierte Clavier, both became admirable keyboard players.

Bach im Fluss is a thematic collage of selected movements from cantatas and instrumental works compiled by Arthur Godel and Rudolf Lutz.

Among the current sensations of the historical-performance scene is I Barocchisti, from Italian Switzerland, and its director and harpsichordist Diego Fasolis. The group released performances of Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos on a pair of discs, with the second disc also containing the Concerto for flute, violin, harpsichord, strings, and continuo in A minor, BWV 1044. Whatever may be said for breaking up the set in other situations, this radical approach is best appreciated as a whole. Part of the charm of these classic works is their differentiation, somewhat obscured in modern performances (and even in some on historical instruments) that use a large string section.