Comparison
Recordings:
Yo-Yo Ma CBS Masterworks M2K 37867
Janos Starker [mono ADD] EMI 7243 4
89183-2, -4-2
Galbraith, 8-string guitar. Bach, Lute
Suite BWV 995 Delos DE 3258
Robert Cohen. Brilliant Classics Volume
16, 99375/3/4
These magnificent works
have been recorded many times, most
notably by Casals. The requirements
for a successful performance are 1)
maintaining attractive tone throughout
while 2) mastering and concealing the
difficulties so that there is no sense
of struggling either with the instrument
or the music and 3) generating interest
in the music by projecting the rhythm
and finding a variety of textures and
phrasings to reveal the pieces as individual
works worthy of interest. These cellist
Kliegel accomplishes in exemplary manner,
and this performance is one of the best
I’ve heard. The recorded sound is close,
realistic and atmospheric. These are
presented as the suites of Baroque dances
they truly are and not as an arpeggio
drill or meditation exercise.
Kliegel gets all the
notes right, without any of the clicks
and scrapes by which some cellists reveal
their struggle, as merely the first
step in her musicianly shaping of these
works. Her tone is always fresh and
imaginative, her phrasing expressive
but never arch or forced, the forward
musical motion maintained with discretely
applied expressive vibrato, rubato,
and fermate. She convincingly
differentiates between melody lines,
cadenzas, arpeggiated chords and vertical
chords, something most cellists do not
accomplish. The brilliance of her cadenza
playing in the Preludes to Suites
Numbers 2 and 6 will amaze you. In sum
this performance remains interesting,
nay, engrossing, and is over before
you realise it, leaving you wanting
more; praise rarely to be merited by
a performance of these works to which
we have all at one time or another listened
out of duty.
Paul Galbraith’s guitar
versions of Bach’s solo violin sonatas
and the lute works — including BWV 995,
Bach’s own arrangement for the plucked
string of BWV 1011 — have proven to
be astonishing, illuminating, enriching
and also immensely entertaining. He
has, unaccountably, not recorded anyone’s
arrangements of the remaining five of
the solo cello works. May he remedy
this omission soon.
The best modern set
of these works for a long time in the
1960s was by Janos Starker, not surprisingly,
a teacher of Kliegel’s. The Ma set,
choice of many critics recently, the
best we had for a long time, frequently
suffers, as many do, from a sense of
aimless, barless longeurs, with
too many notes at the same value and
texture, perhaps an excess of soul.
Only occasionally does he get moving
and observe the bar lines. Amazingly,
Kliegel’s timings are sometimes longer
than his. Reportedly Ma’s remake, with
ingenuous video track, is truly awful;
I’ve not seen or heard it.
The Robert Cohen recording
was originally issued on the much lamented
Collins Classics label, and is now available
on the Regis label as RRC2001; Cohen
plays with energy, grace, drama, and
intelligence, can attain exquisite poetry
in the slow movements, and receives
very clear and close recording. His
Bourrée in Suite No. 4 is especially
remarkable, his prelude to No. 6 very
robust, if a little ragged. Now and
then he has a bit of a struggle, and
his tone is just occasionally a little
nasal, but most of the time his playing
is clean and gritty. One could be quite
satisfied with this version in one’s
collection. If you can find it, the
Brilliant set of the complete
Bach chamber music is an unbelievable
bargain, as usual.
But if you want just
the cello suites Kliegel is one of the
very best and some will prefer her version
to all others regardless of price.
Paul Shoemaker
Maria Kliegel, violoncello Stradivarius 1693,
"ex-Gendron" 
