BCM @ Madoo: 
Johnny Gandelsman Plays Bach

JS Bach's Cello Suites

Johann Sebastian Bach’s career can be split up into four main phases:  Weimar, Arnstadt & Mühlhausen (1703–1708); Weimar (1708–1717); Köthen (1717–1723); and Leipzig (1723–1750). Though most of his positions required a heavy workload of religious compositions, his time in the court of Köthen was particularly light on that front, as his Calvinist employer, Prince Leopold, had modest musical requirements for the church, but loved music and had excellent musicians in his employ. It was in this period that Bach wrote much of his most beloved secular music, including the Brandenburg Concertos, the Orchestral Suites, the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, as well as the Six Suites for Solo Cello, the first three of which we will hear today. Though they were likely written around 1720, the cello suites were only published in 1824 and were thought of at the time as works for private exercises. It wasn’t until Pablo Casals, who found a set in a thrift shop in 1889, brought them to the concert stage in the early 1900s that they started to gain public popularity. More recent scholarship has led some to believe that the instrument that they were originally written for was the violoncello da spala, a smaller instrument that was much bigger than a viola but was played across the chest. So it’s not a far stretch to move them over to the violin, and today that’s what we’ll hear performed by Johnny Gandelsman. Of the project to play the cello suites on the violin, Gandelsman has said:

 "Similar to the Sonatas and Partitas, living in the world of the cello suites feels like working in a scientist’s lab – the compositions radiate with the joy of continuously finding new ways to expand the technical and emotional possibilities of the instrument, through the simple act of imagining the impossible, and then putting it down on paper…. In the violin pieces, I tried to follow the manuscript as much as I could. The cello suites feel different. What I see is an implication for infinite possibilities, the way an incredible improviser can find endless variation within the simplest form. I've been thinking a lot about one of my favorite musicians, the Irish fiddler Martin Hayes. Seeing Martin weave together a medley of Irish tunes is very similar to seeing and experiencing amazing magic – I'm always left dumbfounded, how did he do that? His art is never flashy, never tries to impress – it flows directly from the source material. There is a delight to it that is very similar to the joy I see in Bach’s compositions, and there is also something very humble about the process. It's not setting out to change the world, or write the greatest piece ever written – instead, it's a scientist's life-long pursuit of finding out what else might be in there, what layers might still be hiding; engaging one's imagination, but also being able to then actually do what you've imagined. That’s beautiful.”

–ML