Bach - Solo Cello Suites Nos 1-6 etc.
Pablo Casals vc
EMI 562611-2 Buy now
(132’ · ADD)
Alternative recording: Naxos 8 110915/6 (148’ · ADD)
Solo Cello Suites Nos 1-6. English Suite No 6 in D, BWV811 – Gavotte I; Gavotte II (arr Pollain). Komm, süsser Tod, BWV478 (arr Siloti). Violin Sonata, BWV1003 – Andante (arr Siloti). Orchestral Suite No 3 in D, BWV1068 – Air (arr Siloti). Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, BWV564 – Adagio (arr Siloti)
Recorded 1927-39.
When these recordings first appeared back in the 1930s and ’40s, Bach for solo cello was a singular and esoteric concept. Casals had rediscovered the Suites for modern ears and his probing, albeit highly idiosyncratic, playing was a mandatory recommendation. Indeed, in those days it was the only recommendation. Nowadays, his achievement is still beyond question, but there will be some listeners who won’t like what they hear.
After, say, the elegantly tapered playing of János Starker, Casals can initially sound wilful and ungainly. His bow seems to slice through chords like a meat cleaver. His intonation wanders, and his fingers press down on the strings so forcefully that a note ‘pings’ even before the bow is drawn. Casals reels and rhapsodises as if blind drunk on expressive freedom.
However, this impression is only transitory. What at first sounds gruff, even offhand soon registers as boldly assertive. The intonation isn’t so much ‘faulty’ as expressively employed, and as for those pre-echoing ‘pings’, they soon cease to matter – much as Glenn Gould’s mumbling did years later. Time teaches you that the speaking tone, the poetic tenutos, the irresistible lilt in faster dance movements and the varied approach to vibrato were part of a grand musical plan, one that’s now cherishable.
Casals makes a singular musical experience out of every movement. Try the Courante and Sarabande of the Fifth Suite – muscular resolve followed by profound self-communing.
Transfer-wise, things could hardly have gone better. True, there’s some surface noise, but the sound has considerable realism and the broad contours of Casals’s tone are untroubled by excessive filtering. A rival package from Pearl (identical couplings plus a transcription from a Bach-Vivaldi Concerto) reports a fatter cello sound with less well focused contours. EMI’s set offers only the Suites in transfers that, while admirably clear, are rather less natural than Ward Marston’s for Naxos.
