Bach

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.

The cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, known as Bach cantatas (German: Bachkantaten), are a body of work consisting of over 200 surviving independent works, and at least several dozen that are considered lost.

Suzuki presents the 1749 version of the St. John Passion, a work that underwent many changes since its first performance in 1724.

The pure polyphonic quality of J.S. Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias cannot be overstated – simple yet bursting with ideas, they offer an agile introduction to late-baroque musical forms and imitative writing in general, while retaining a cantabile feel. These exquisite miniatures, transcendent of the didactic purpose to which they were relegated for too long, provide an orderly and at once concise and comprehensive survey of Bach’s soundscape. The purity and density of their musical substance, distilled in a sort of abstract and universal language, has naturally encouraged numerous arrangements from the 19th century onwards for vast array of other instruments.

Giovanni Mazzocchin is born in Bassano del Grappa in 1994. He studied at the Conservatory 'Arrigo Pedrollo' in Vicenza under the guidance of Marco Tezza. During the years of conservatory he also attended masterclasses with some notable pianists such as Carlo Grante, Alexander Madzar and Filippo Gamba. He degreed in 2012 with high degrees, honor and special mention.

The first Archiv Produktion recordings were made in 1947 by Leipzig-born organist Helmut Walcha who set a new standard in terms of organ performances and recordings. Walcha held an unrivalled position as a Bach interpreter.

“This album is, in many ways, about love: the romantic love between husband and wife; familial love between parents and their children; and love for the Creator.”

There is an Icelandic saying, “mergur málsins”, which directly translates to “the marrow of the matter,” and these Suites, to me, speak directly to the essence of being human. As for many cellists, these Suites have been my steady companion throughout my life with the cello, first as a vehicle to learn counterpoint, style, and harmony, then as material with which to explore personal expression and interpretation, and today they are a mirror, reflecting the deeper truth of the human experience, revealing more layers of meaning each time I come back to them.

Domestic music-making of a distinctly superior sort is lovingly recreated in a rare recording of the notebooks Bach presented to his second wife.

No fewer than three Bachs—father and two sons—and three wonderful versions of the Magnificat written over the course of the eighteenth century: one setting very familiar, the other two much less so.