Philip Higham - Bach: Suites for Solo Cello (2015)

J.S. Bach's six Suites for solo cello, BWV 1007-1012, can be played in many ways and, just as much as the six sonatas for solo violin, have a monumental quality that seems to demand ambitious interpretations. As a result, it's quite refreshing to encounter a cellist, and a young one at that, who does not strive to rip gutsily through the arpeggios and implied counterpoint, does not take the slow introductions and slow movements to ponderous Mahlerian lengths, and does not highlight the dance rhythms as if they were being played in a club or what have you. British cellist Philip Higham, whose only previous recording was of Britten's solo cello suites, offers precise recordings that are restrained without being plain. Sample the familiar Gavotte from the Suite No. 6 in D major, BWV 1012. What is so often heavily emphasized, hoping to get every last bit of counterpoint hidden in the lines, is turned by Higham into a straightforward, but hardly artless, tune. The Prelude movements at the beginnings of the suites are not oracular utterances here, but have the introductory quality that Bach may well have intended for them. For the first five suites Higham uses a 1697 cello made by Carlo Giuseppe Testore, a songful instrument entirely appropriate for the music, switching to a modern five-string cello by Kai-Thomas Roth for a still brighter finale. The overall feeling is one of lightness. You get the feeling throughout that Bach would have enjoyed these performances, and even if Higham doesn't close the book on these works, he's certainly well worth hearing.