Bach - Cello Suites

Product Details

Binding : Audio CD
EAN : 0724356287822
Label : EMI Classics
Number of Discs : 1
Product Group : Music
Release Date : 2004-08-02
UPC : 724356287822

ASIN : B0002I8UGQ

Track Listings for

Disc-1
1. I. Prelude
2. II. Allemande
3. III. Courante
4. IV. Sarabande
5. V. Menuet I
6. VI. Menuet II
7. VII. Gigue
8. I. Praeludium
9. II. Allemande
10. III. Courante
11. IV. Sarabande
12. V. Bourree I
13. VI. Bourree II
14. VII. Gigue
15. I. Prelude
16. II. Allemande
17. III. Courante
18. IV. Sarabande
19. V. Gavotte I
20. VI. Gavotte II
21. VII. Gigue

Disc-2
1. I. Prelude
2. II. Allemande
3. III. Courante
4. IV. Sarabande
5. V. Menuet I
6. VI. Menuet II
7. VII. Gigue
8. I. Prelude
9. II. Allemande
10. III. Courante
11. IV. Sarabande
12. V. Bourree I
13. VI. Bourree II
14. VII. Gigue
15. I. Prelude
16. II. Allemande
17. III. Courante
18. IV. Sarabande
19. V. Gavotte I
20. VI. Gavotte II
21. VII. Gigue

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Customer Reviews

The best that I've heard! (2008-05-25)

I currently own recordings of the Bach cello suites by Rostropovich, Casals, Yo-Yo Ma and Fournier and have heard many others. Tortelier's recording is my firm favourite. The pace is just right; slow enough to express feeling, but fast enough to realise the no doubt intended flow to the pieces. Tortelier is completely at one with the Bach Cello Suites in these recordings, and plays them beautifully. Highly recommended.

Great recordings from the last Century (2007-11-02)

These recordings from 1983 were originally available as two separate CDs, which is how I first came to hear them. They are now available on the EMI Classics label as `Great Recordings of the Century'. These works, like much of Bach's music, were long neglected during the Romantic and Modern periods as being too dry, academic and old-fashioned. They are now sitting happily at the centre of Bach's many compositions for solo instruments and are considered to be some of the finest works ever written for the solo cello.The return to popularity, if in fact they were ever really popular in Bach's time, must be attributed to Pablo Casals (1876-1973) who picked up the manuscripts of this work and brought the music to life, and into the public domain once again thanks in no small part to his profile as one of the great modern cello virtuosos.Since this renewed interest there have been transcriptions for other solo instruments such as viola, bass, guitar, horn saxophone and trombone, but none of these compare to the solo cello versions.These Tortelier recordings remain the benchmark, despite competition from the likes of Starker, Fournier, Tortelier, Schiff, Harrell, Kirshbaum, Gendron, Wispelwey and Ma.I bought these recordings during the 1980s when my enthusiasm for Bach was still in its infancy, my appreciation at that time being limited simply to the `Brandenburgs' and a few violin concertos. But such was the impact that these most intimate and emotional works had on me, I was compelled to search for more of the composer's music.It's thanks to these recordings that I have come to admire and appreciate Bach's music.

PROFOUNDLY HUMAN(IST) PERFORMANCES (2007-05-11)

It's surprising how very different interpretations of these amazing solo works can each convince you that, yes, that's the way they should go. Certainly, with Bach's Cello Suites as with Shakespeare's Cleopatra, custom cannot stale their infinite variety. Casals, their rediscoverer, brought his inimitable mix of style and passion to them. Rostropovich seemed to chisel them out of the rock like some marmoreal Michelangelo statue. For some cellists, they are towering and grandiloquent. For others, they are intimate and personal. Some emphasise the joy of the dance movements, others the intensity of the sarabandes, others still apply the strictest theories of authentic period performance to them.Anyone of a certain age will recall the passionate commitment to these Suites shown by a highly charismatic Tortelier in his TV masterclasses of 50 years or so ago. That same commitment shines through these performances from the 70's. These are readings where you can take technique for granted. What's more important, Tortelier allows the infinite variety of the Suites themselves and each of the movements within them to speak their own language. There's charm, wit, humour, beauty, emotion, spirituality as it's called for. Tortelier understands that these are dance suites, but that they also encapsulate great profundity in their notes. If I had to sum up his interpretations in one word, it would be their `humanity'. And that seems particularly right for the secular works Bach wrote with such obvious pleasure while he was at the court of the young Prince Leopold in Cothen. Away from the world of church services, Bach produced works that were just as profound in a different, I'm tempted to say more human, certainly more humanist way. That is something that seems particularly close to Tortelier's heart and thinking. And it comes out wonderfully in these performances.

Unsurpassed Masterclass in Technique (2005-12-19)

As an ex professional 'cellist myself I'm more than familiar with these suites by Bach. Their content is detailed in other reviews - here I wish to comment just on Tortelier's interpretation.

One of the greatest things about the suites is that they are so flexible to player's interpretation and Tortelier makes this abundantly clear with the opening bars of the prelude to the first suite. His technique is astounding, precise, lyrical and beautiful. The music literally dances in novel and previously unimagined ways that blows me away every time I hear it.

Yo Yo Ma's extremely accomplished suites are lush and beautiful but sound flat, dull and unimaginative by comparison. Rostropovich's suites sound ham fisted, bullying the music out of the instrument without the dexterity or refinement of Tortelier. Even the god-like Casals would have to admit that Tortelier's account of this incredible music puts more depth into every note than even he could manage.

Buy this record. Buy it for anyone that has ever known the suites and especially buy it for anyone that already owns a copy by another 'cellist. Any 'cellist. If he recorded no other record in his lifetime this recording alone would mark him out as a genius. If each piece is a song then Tortelier turns them into Operas.

Don't take my word for it. Listen for yourself. I swear that afterwards you'll be compelled to write something similar here!

The cello is tortuous and torturous beauty (2005-11-28)

The Cello is a rare instrument that can live on its own with no great difficulty at all, even if we do not know it very well nor very much. But then a completely different world appears. We are not used to that instrument standing alone. We discover its deep reverberation, and its important mobility in tone and color. Those suites are very standardized. Each one has six pieces, all the same except the fifth piece in the fourth, fifth and sixth suites where it is respectively a bourrée, and two gavottes. We discover this strange bourrée that introduces a ternary tempo into this basically binary music, and this bourrée comes from the village, the farmers, or the peasants who used to dance around in the village square around the maypole or any other oaktree in the middle of the green. This bourrée is rustic here. Mozart will make it into the ancester of the waltz. At times the cello becomes mysterious and even sombre and menacing, and yet at other times it is light and luminous. That’s the flexibility of this rather unknown instrument. The music is rich, warm and mesmerizing, and it would be a fault to miss it, to ignore it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

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