Going Solo

For some reason, surveys of the best performances of the six solo cello suites of J S Bach don't tend to mention this two cd box set from Mstislav Rostropovich. It does the job perfectly well for me, however. Maybe Bach isn't looked upon as being Rostropovich's main area of repertoire. He himself said that early attempts to play the work didn't satisfy him but this relatively late effort recorded in 1995 distills a lifetime's consideration of the structure. I've listened to the two disks seperatelyb over a couple of days, there's a bit much to take all six suites in at one sitting and however majestic the music and performance a solo instrument can get a bit wearing after two and a half hours. In the sleeve notes though, Rostropovich is keen to emphasise the differences between the individual suites. He states that the concept as a whole can be deemed to be "infinite joy from this genius of music" and he categorises the suites seperately from one to six as being lightness, sorrow and intensity, brilliance, majesty and opacity, darkness and sunlight. Having played the cello suites and the Goldbergs in close proximity, the centrality of Bach to western culture becomes very clear.