Now I know what you’re thinking. Not another
recording of the Bach cello suites. There are, after all,
at least twenty that could be obtained at present. You have
your favourite and that’s that. Well Wolfgang Boettcher begs
to disagree.
The First Suite which is the shortest, sets
the pattern: six movements beginning with a Prelude including
an Allemande, a Courante, a Sarabande then a Minuet or a Bourrée
or two or a Gavotte ending in a Gigue in contrasting compound
time. The key stated tends to be the one adhered to throughout
the suite except that the fifth movement will have a contrasting
key in the middle section. I like a slightly free approach
in the Preludes and Sarabandes. By ‘free’ I mean with some
rubato but not too much. I also like a sense of architecture,
of building through a lengthy movement and with definite dynamics
which, Bach did not include on the whole in his scores. Immediately
it struck me - and this is even more personal than usual -
that Boettcher did not bring out, what are for me, these necessities;
certainly not as much as I wanted or as much as in other versions.
In other words I prefer a slightly ‘romanticized’ performance
bringing out some of the ‘dreaminess’ of the music. Boettcher
is quite ‘up-tempo’ in the Prelude and Allemande and does
not linger on details but is constantly moving forward.
I was however beginning to reform my opinion
when a young ex-pupil, Nadine, who is a conservatoire cellist
popped in and over a little ‘drop’ we listened to the Second
Suite, which she had just studied, in Bach’s most moving key,
D minor. She started to talk about the ‘wow’ factor in the
performance that had, I must admit, eluded me especially in
the Gigue movement. Indeed with the score in front of me I
found this a most involving performance with ideal tempi and
expression. Or was I wooed by an expert who also happened
to be very attractive. Anyway I pass on these comments to
show if you needed it, how difficult it is to form a view
of a performance which a fine professional player has honed
after many years of work and thought. So who is Wolfgang Boettcher?
He was born in 1935 and has a distinguished
career behind him as concerto soloist, chamber musician with
the Brindisi Quartet, teacher and festival director. As he
himself comments in his curious and fascinating essay he has
lived with and studied these works for fifty years. He made
the recording in 2001 but it was not until this past autumn
- the essay being dated Oct 28th 2008 - that he
revisited his sessions in preparation for the discs’ eventual
release. As he points out, the CD affords us a snapshot “one
stage of a musician who wishes to approach ever nearer to
the wonder of this music”.
The baroque cello he uses by Matteo Goffriller
-Venice 1722, comes into its own in the wonderful third suite
in the resonant key of C major. This is especially the case
in two of my favourite movements: the closing Bourrée and
the Gigue. He uses a baroque bow and there is real sense of,
to quote my newly acquired female expert “the earthiness of
the strings”. Calum MacDonald in his detailed and useful notes
describes the suite as “especially virtuoso”. Boettcher throws
more light on this, telling us that he has “developed away
from a broad, beautiful, uniform legato sound to ever more
clarity, declamation and diversity”.
But I still had another niggling doubts about
what I was hearing. The Fourth Suite helped to clinch it.
I heard Nadine struggling with the tuning – E flat is a very
tricky key on the cello - as she played for me the wonderful
opening Prelude. I then went back to an old LP version played
by Casals. By contrast, for Boettcher it seems all so easy
and matter-of-fact. This is a serene and elegant suite yet
he lacks that dangerous quality – that true excitement. For
me there is little in the way of ‘wow’ factor. And then there’s
the shock of hearing the second Bourrée which acts as the
middle section of the fifth movement played pizzicato. He
does this in the same place in the Sixth Suite. Boettcher
makes a case out for this in his notes having tried out many
possibilities before deciding on playing certain movements
in this way.
No one can really say for whom these rare works
were originally composed. Their inspiration might have been
the Rosary Sonatas of Heinrich Biber which were probably composed
in 1680s. These extraordinary pieces employ fourteen different
‘scordatura’ tunings which means tuning up or down certain
strings to obtain differing chords and sonorities. In the
Fifth Suite Bach asks for the upper string to be tuned down
a whole tone creating a darker sound especially in chordal
passages. Oddly enough the haunting Sarabande is one of the
few movements in the suites which has no harmony notes but
simply a very moving and slightly despairing and angular melody.
Boettcher is especially good here. This is the central panel
in a suite that seems to mark a crisis point for Bach and
in the tragic key of C minor. Even the Gigue ends with a lack
of optimism. This is also the only French-style suite with
its typically rather stiff opening to a bipartite Prelude.
It’s also the only suite to survive in Bach’s hand albeit
as a much ornamented lute arrangement. Calum MacDonald points
out that this version for lute may give us a clue as to how
Bach expected his performers to elaborate on the written note.
I’m afraid however that I find Boettcher’s performance of
this suite generally fails to hold my attention.
The Sixth Suite is the longest of all mainly
due to the Allemande which is twice the length of that in
the Second Suite. Immediately it begins with its bright and
rhythmic Prelude you are in a brave new world and D major
fulfills that promise. In addition this suite is at a higher
pitch. Indeed it may have been composed for an instrument
called a ‘piccolo cello’ - now unknown - which was tuned considerably
higher. Much of it is notated in the tenor clef. Modern players
have to get around this by using conventional tuning but always
stretching up onto the instrument’s neck. I am not sure that
Boettcher is entirely successful in this work in regard to
tuning especially in the double-stopping passages and in tonal
quality.
Despite my criticisms of these performances
there are undoubtedly highlights. The freely, improvisatory
Preludes of the First and Third suites which Boettcher plays
magically. Then again there’s the final Gigue of the Sixth,
the Sarabande of the Fifth and the Allemande’s of the Third
and Fourth suites. Nevertheless I will not be keeping this
recording but handing it onto my pupil. It is in the nature
of taste and criticism, that Nadine really enjoys Boettcher’s
playing. She knows much more about the cello than I will ever
forget.
Gary Higginson
Wolfgang Boettcher
(cello) 
