Pieter Wispelwey

Bach: Cellosuites 

Pieter Wispelway plays Bachs ‘six Suites’ cellosolo’s, back to back. Wispelwey has a strong bond with the suites: he recorded them three times, each in a different phase of his life, with a new interpretation. That is the thing about Bach’s music: every time you hear it, you can hear something new, another deeper layer. A performance of all the six suites is almost a transcendent experience for the lover of classical music and something they should experience at least once in their life.  

Bachs Cellosuites 

Bachs six Cellosuites form a highlight in the history of music. The suite is a collective of dances where people previously actually danced to, but later in the seventeenth and eighteenth century turned into pure listening music. Bach’s six suites followed this development: Every suit goes one step further than the previous one. For example, Bach introduces melodic jumps in the fourth suite, chords in the fifth. The sixth and final suite is logically a culmination of all previous ones. Chords, melodic jumps and implied harmony, Bach appeals to all techniques that a cellist can possibly possess. The concluding Gigue is even a duet for solo cello. Such challenges are well spent on Pieter Wispelwey, who knows this music by Bach inside out. 

Pieter Wispelwey 

Pieter Wispelwey put Bach’s Cello Suites on CD three times before, but he is far from finished with it. ‘I want to record them at least three more times, six suites, six recordings,’ he says jokingly in the documentary ‘392′, a bonus DVD accompanying his latest recording of the suites, in which Wispelwey talks about Bach’s music with Professor Laurencez Dreyfus (Oxford University); Professor John Butt (Glasgow University) and Professor Kees Boeke (Universities of Trossingen and Zurich). In that documentary, it is immediately clear why Wispelwey is such an exceptional performer of this music: he has an enormous amount of knowledge about Bach’s music, but never becomes dogmatic and dares to go by his feelings and his musicality. This makes Wispelwey’s Bach interpretations a rare phenomenon.  

Hear Here!

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