Bach Cello Suites

[staxomega]

The following quote is taken from this thread which has more recent discussion:
https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,3719.600.html

The newer releases start with Brinkmann, about 4 down - who would certainly be a contender since she like many of the more successful ones in the Blind Listen, is generally middle-of-the-road.

Of those listed below, by own favourites are Malov, and Valli, and Swarts. 
But ultimately I still gravitate back to East (12th in the Blind Listen) and Lipkind (2nd).

Very much agreed on Malov. I did some comparisons with him and Kuijken's Accent recording a while back and while I preferred Malov, I came to the conclusion that they're both essential for me.

The one that has been my go to for the last couple of years (unsure if it was part of this blind test) is Colin Carr's first recording.

[Gorio1968]

The following quote is taken from this thread which has more recent discussion:
https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,3719.600.html

The newer releases start with Brinkmann, about 4 down - who would certainly be a contender since she like many of the more successful ones in the Blind Listen, is generally middle-of-the-road.

Of those listed below, by own favourites are Malov, and Valli, and Swarts. 
But ultimately I still gravitate back to East (12th in the Blind Listen) and Lipkind (2nd).

Thank you.

[Selig]

No fans of Bertrand it seems? Is the reverb a deal-breaker maybe?

The 73 minute runtime for Malov seems remarkable to me. Are there any others even close to <80 minutes?! Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the discography.

[prémont]

The 73 minute runtime for Malov seems remarkable to me. Are there any others even close to <80 minutes?! Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the discography.

He omits all repeats in the new recording. In my opinion he delivers a truncated version even if well played. Some years ago he recorded suites no. 1, 2 and 6 doing all the repeats.

[Que]

He omits all repeats in the new recording. In my opinion he delivers a truncated version even if well played. Some years ago he recorded suites no. 1, 2 and 6 doing all the repeats.

Artists that skip repeats do not understand Baroque music...

[prémont]

Artists that skip repeats do not understand Baroque music...

What about Gustav Leonhardt? He also omitted all repeats in his second recording of the English suites and the partitas (for EMI, rereleased by Virgin).

[Que]

What about Gustav Leonhardt? He also omitted all repeats in his second recording of the English suites and the partitas (for EMI, rereleased by Virgin).

I think Leonhardt was early in his carreer quite dogmatic and literal, an understandable response to the misconceptions of the time. But, perhaps paradoxically, the art of improvisation has an important place in Baroque music.
It seems inconceivable that Leonhardt wasn't aware of this function of repeats, he probably just didn't want to go that way at that time. Also, the knowledge of how this was actually done has grown over the past few decades.

[Mandryka]

I think Leonhardt was early in his carreer quite dogmatic and literal, an understandable response to the misconceptions of the time. But, perhaps paradoxically, the art of improvisation has an important place in Baroque music.
It seems inconceivable that Leonhardt wasn't aware of this function of repeats, he probably just didn't want to go that way at that time. Also, the knowledge of how this was actually done has grown over the past few decades.

You don't improvise a repeat in a score!  You plan to play it differently maybe.

By the way, arguably in the Goldberg Variations for example, the function of the repeats is to do with the balance of the whole. They're not there as a vehicle to display the performer's ingenuity.

[Que]

You don't improvise a repeat in a score!  You plan to play it differently maybe.

Well yes, that's what I meant... (except for the "maybe") and there are several performance techniques to do that.

PS I accidentally repsonded in your post, but have restored it.

[Mandryka]

Tantalisingly in 2013 Davitt Moroney wrote a paper for the Oxford Early Music Review on Leonhardt's understanding of authenticity in performance, but I can't get my mitts on it!

[Selig]

He omits all repeats in the new recording. In my opinion he delivers a truncated version even if well played. Some years ago he recorded suites no. 1, 2 and 6 doing all the repeats.

Are you sure he has recorded suite no. 1? I can't seem to find it. Is it on a commercial recording?

[Selig]

Tantalisingly in 2013 Davitt Moroney wrote a paper for the Oxford Early Music Review on Leonhardt's understanding of authenticity in performance, but I can't get my mitts on it!

Good to be reminded, I skimmed it a while ago and it seemed interesting. Here it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IGyU5sdZJxqisxGv2-BVtEmJV48ZOf-S/view

[Mandryka]

Good to be reminded, I skimmed it a while ago and it seemed interesting. Here it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IGyU5sdZJxqisxGv2-BVtEmJV48ZOf-S/view

Excellent, thank you.

It may be useful to collect together the paragraphs of Leonhardt's paper on authenticity in English:

On performance using original instruments

If one is able to persuade, what is offered creates an
authentic impression. If one is striving to be authentic,
one will never persuade. Only those performers who
attempt—in general—to penetrate into the world of ideas
of a great mind and of his epoch can, if they have acquired
a suitable technique and possess that mysterious thing, natural talent, arouse that impression of offering some-
thing true and sincere.


However, a performance of a piece of music can never
be authentic, since music itself evades being pinned down.
What makes music is not the notes but the sounds. Even
composers give to each performance [of their own works]
a new authenticity.


It seems to me that more essential than the antithesis
'authentic/inauthentic' (and who would be able to pass
judgement here?) is the matter of artistic quality, which is
hard to define in words (the heart has its reasons . . .); on
this matter one can only leave the audience to pass judge-
ment—the audience that itself changes, however, just as
the musician does. (Certain short-circuits can occasion-
ally be attributed to the fact that these changes do not
happen in a synchronized way and it is not always the
musicians who lead the way . . .!)


I hope that this recording will not be characterized
as 'definitive' or 'authentic' because of its cast of players.
It was performed by musicians who consider histori-
cal enquiry as vital and as belonging to their métier, yet
without perceiving this to be 'unusual' or stressing it in
particular. The use of historical instruments is also not
abnormal, or at any rate not for the players. For many
listeners the sonorities may still seem unfamiliar; but
these [listeners] may, by closer 'synchronization' of their
listening, come to acknowledge that the balance between
the different instruments now happens completely natu-
rally; that the multiplicity of shadings of sonorities and
the subtleties of intonation of the woodwind instruments
(compared to the smoothness of later instruments), con-
stitutes a richness; that the string instruments have a
leaner yet richer sound quality than do those of a later
period (which are suitable for different music). The ear
becomes accustomed to all this more quickly than one
would believe, and that is good: because the instruments
have then once again become, for both players and lis-
teners, literally 'instruments' in the service of music, and
all 'connoisseurs and true lovers' [of music] can, in con-
stantly renewed amazement, surrender themselves to the
unfailing sense of measure and the boundless creativity of
Johann Sebastian Bach.

[prémont]

Are you sure he has recorded suite no. 1? I can't seem to find it. Is it on a commercial recording?

Well, I own the recording in question, so I am rather sure.

It's here:

https://www.amazon.de/13-Strings-Vol-violoncello-2013-08-03/dp/B01KB0GHC8/ref=sr_1_7?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=sergey+malov&qid=1631566331&s=music&sr=1-7

[prémont]

Good to be reminded, I skimmed it a while ago and it seemed interesting. Here it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IGyU5sdZJxqisxGv2-BVtEmJV48ZOf-S/view

Thanks, Selig for this interesting article.

[Iota]

By the way, arguably in the Goldberg Variations for example, the function of the repeats is to do with the balance of the whole. They're not there as a vehicle to display the performer's ingenuity.

Certainly feels that way to me, I find the Goldberg's now without repeats virtually intolerable. Which rules out Gould for the rare occasions I'm in the mood for him (though I seem to remember you never are ..).

[North Star]

This one was also released earlier in 2021, Dalen has also researched the works' relationship with dance.

https://www.youtube.com/v/5IV0YuzUur8&list=OLAK5uy_n6qEO2xOJ7dwnUvtM2ARXIREIChaE6ltQ

[Madiel]

Well if that prelude is dancing, it's taking things slow.

[bioluminescentsquid]

Anyone know this recording? I like what I hear, tuneful humorful accented playing.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mlDatl2qCNzC-YJ0GH6Hhk1lyYkQkS0ms

[prémont]

Anyone know this recording? I like what I hear, tuneful humorful accented playing.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mlDatl2qCNzC-YJ0GH6Hhk1lyYkQkS0ms

Yes, it's fresh, dancing and brilliant. I like it very much.