J.S.Bach: The Cello Suites, BWV 1007-1012
- Submitting institution
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Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 2853861
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- Resonus Classics
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Rather than seeing Bach’s Cello Suites as part of the metanarrative of the cello’s gradual emergence as a solo instrument - its “liberation from the bassline” - the underpinning innovation in my approach in this recording was to set the Suites in the context of the rest of Bach’s output. That meant bringing to bear my experience as a basso continuo player and a longstanding seam of work in which I explored the harmonic use of the cello in a continuo role.
Almost 25 years ago, in an article for Early Music, I examined how cellists may have accompanied Corelli’s Op. 5 Sonatas, taking as my starting point the dilemma posed by Corelli's title page designation “for violin and cello or harpsichord”. I proposed then that the cello was used as a harmonic instrument, rather than simply dutifully doubling the bass in CPE Bach’s “ideal combination” of harpsichord and cello. In exploring the improvisation strategies required to realise a solo cello continuo, I plundered Bach’s Cello Suites as a source of “lateral harmony”.
This Bach recording, in a sense, reverses that process, seeing the Suites as frozen improvisation, grown from the principles of continuo playing.
Intersecting with this key insight was the consideration of the rhetoric implications of Bach’s phrasing arising from a critical re-appraisal of the markings in Anna Magdalena Bach’s copy of the Suites, and further study of French Baroque dance. My aim was to make a performance that would offer genuinely new insights into this music, rather than "another" recording of the Suites.
This disc won the Gramophone Awards 2015 in the Baroque Instrumental category; BBC Music Magazine Award 2016 in the Instrumental Category; Herald Classical Music CD of the year 2015; and is listed in the Gramophone 50 Greatest Bach Recordings.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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