Nakład wyprzedany, ostatni egzemplarz Pieter Wispelwey is equally at home on Baroque and modern instruments. These performances are carefully prepared, beautifully executed and most eloquently expressed. The instruments, too, sound well, Wispelwey having chosen an early 18th-century cello by Barak Norman for the first five Suites, and a five-stringed violoncellopiccolo by an unidentified craftsman for the special requirements of the Sixth.
Wispelwey is an imaginative player with a highly developed sense of fantasy. These qualities are as welcome in his performances of Bach as they're to be treated with circumspection in his almost entirely fanciful written introduction to the music. Preludes come across especially well since it's in these wonderfully varied opening movements, with their rhetorical diversity, that the performer can give rein most freely to his or her most natural conversational inflexions.
And he makes the most of that thrilling climax at the peak of a chromatic accent through a full scale and a half. Sarabandes are profound and reflective without being weighty, and allemandes graceful and substantial. The galanteries, by contrast, are lightly bowed and redolent of playful and demonstrative gestures. That, to an extent, is true also of the courantes, while the gigues are firmly projected, full-toned and splendidly robust.
Wispelwey's set of Bach's Cello Suites, then, is deserving of praise. If you're familiar with the gruff grandeur of Pablo Casals, or the aristocratic nobility of Fournier, then these performances will throw an entirely different light on the music, more conversational and with airier discourse. You may never want to be without the two earlier sets, but Wispelwey's version sits comfortably on the uppermost range of the period-instrument performance ladder. • Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010
Works:
•
Bach, J S: Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV1007
•
Bach, J S: Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV1008
•
Bach, J S: Cello Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV1009
•
Bach, J S: Cello Suite No. 4 in E flat major, BWV1010
•
Bach, J S: Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor, BWV1011
•
Bach, J S: Cello Suites Nos. 1-6, BWV1007-1012
•
Bach, J S: Cello Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV1012