Complete Bach Solo Cello Suites

简介

Sophie Shao, cello Johann Sebastian Bach Six Solo Cello Suites, BWV 1007-1012 Every cellist dreams of recording the Bach Cello Suites at least once in his or her lifetime, and after having known these works for over two decades, I decided it was time for me to fulfill this dream. This double CD set is my labor of love for the music that has brought me incredible joy and has shaped me personally, technically, and musically. Each of the Suites consists of five dance movements preceded by a fantasia-like Prelude. Structurally, the Suites are written in the customary binary form for dance music of the period. A Prelude sets the tone of the Suite, followed by an Allemande, a slow flowing dance in common time. Next is the Courante, a fast-paced dance in triple time. The heart of the collection is the Sarabande, in triple time, and then follows a set of galanteries: Menuets for the first two suites, Bourrées for the third and fourth, and Gavottes for the last two. The Suites all end with a Gigue, a lively dance in binary form. Within the rigid formal structure of the Suites lies an endless amount of delights; patterns emerge and are unexpectedly transformed, continued beyond expectation, or veer off earlier than predicted. Beautiful ornamentation colors the simple lines so that the melodies shimmer or gain iridescence in a way that you wouldn’t believe a single instrument could achieve. The infectious rhythm of the quick dances sweeps you off the floor in a whirlwind of joyful activity. And the slow movements, those Sarabandes, all of which are extraordinarily sincere, will melt the hardest of hearts. One of the most gorgeous movements of all the Suites, the Allemande of the 6th Suite, is a perfect aria in dance form, and its sweetness will continually fill your heart with its dulcet voice. Indeed, one can hardly believe what heights a twelve-tone scale, given the linear properties of melody, set into three-dimensions by harmony, can reach on a lone, primarily single-lined instrument, by playing on our need for structure, order, consonance, plot, drama, conflict, and hard-earned resolutions. Little is known of the genesis of these Suites except that they were most likely written around 1720 during Bach’s time in Cöthen. There are no manuscripts in J. S. Bach’s hand but copies exist by his second wife Anna Magdalena, the organist Johann Peter Kellner, Johann Christoph Westphal, an anonymous copyist, and the first edition printed in Paris in 1824, which refers to them not as Suites but as “Sonates ou Etudes.” There they remained mainly as etudes until fourteen year-old Pablo Casals found them in a Barcelona shop and played a Suite every day for twelve years before finally performing them in public. I have used the new Barenreiter Urtext edition printed in 2000, which includes all five autographs. It is my special honor to record these on an Honoré Derazey cello which previously belonged to Marta and Pablo Casals.

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