JS BACH Cello Suites (Complete)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johann Sebastian Bach
Genre:
Instrumental
Label: Resonus Classics
Magazine Review Date: 06/2015
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 145
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: RES10147

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
(6) Suites (Sonatas) for Cello |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
David Watkin, Cello Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer |
Author: Caroline Gill
Watkin plays the first five suites on a cello by Francesco Ruggieri – a luthier contemporary of Bach’s whose instruments are famed for their warmth of tone – and the sixth on a rare five-string cello by the Amati brothers of the same period. But the extraordinarily resonant sound he makes is probably less to do with the instruments than with the playing itself, which is warm, expansive, generous and friendly. That is not to say that this performance is not of the highest level intellectually and technically: it is, and largely because of its appreciation of these suites as not just dances but discourses almost verbal in their directness. It is as if all the work that Watkin has ever done on these pieces has been absorbed absolutely and then reproduced in a performance that is able to be completely original in its voice at the same time as never producing a phrase that jars in its unsubtlety, or presents an ego that overarches the music.
That generosity of artistry directly results in some movements that are not only opened up to the listener as the masterworks they are but as paeans of heart-cracking joy. If you only buy this disc for the Prelude of the C major Suite, for exactly that reason, it will be money well spent.
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