Bach: Cello Suites

Cocset, Bruno

Alpha 301

This recording has been reissued in the Essential Baroque Masterpieces collection with an exclusive interview of Bruno Cocset: • The Bach suites are like a jigsaw: you live with them from childhood on, you pick them up from time to time, since they’re pieces that form part of the repertory, you practise them one after the other in order to discover them. And then you sometimes have the opportunity to play either a whole suite or extracts, first of all for exams or auditions when you’re a student, then in concert. So it’s a corpus that takes shape in a fragmentary kind of way, little by little. For me, the desire and the possibility of playing these pieces from beginning to end and of recording them emerged quite naturally. the jigsaw was gradually pieced together until I found my path through what these suites said to me personally. At a given moment, I had the feeling of a sort of demystification: these suites are dances, why not simply play them that way, as naturally as possible, like Bach’s suites for orchestra or a suite of dances for viola da gamba by Marin Marais? that wouldn’t detract in any way from their musical density – quite the contrary, in fact!Hence, seen from today’s standpoint, this recording is not a culmination but a focus on the moment when one feels ready to share one’s reflection, one’s relationship with this music and with one’s instrument, with urgency and enthusiasm.• My choice of different instruments was really dictated by the desire to present subtly different worlds. I say subtly because they’re not radically different: the same instrument maker, the same performer, the same strings, the same bow. On the other hand, the sound textures are different. "

CD x 2

Alpha

10.08.15

3760014193019

Classica: 'Choc de Classica'