RES10147 BACH DAVID WATKIN

CELLO SUITES

To my teachers, family and friends, especially those (1685-1750) who have been more than one of those things.

Cello Suites Disc One Disc Two

Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 No. 2 in , BWV 1008 1. Prélude [2:14] 1. Prélude [3:19] 2. [4:39] 2. Allemande [3:39] 3. [2:41] 3. Courante [2:04] David Watkin baroque cello 4. [2:50] 4. Sarabande [5:13] 5. Menuet I & II [3:48] 5. Menuet I & II [4:00] 6. [1:43] 6. Gigue [2:54]

Suite No. 3 in , BWV 1009 Suite No. 4 in E flat major, BWV 1010 Cello by Francesco Rugeri, Cremona c. 1670 (Suites 1-5) 7. Prélude [3:00] 7. Preludium [3:27] 8. Allemande [4:13] 8. Allemande [4:04] Cello by Antonio & Hieronymous Amati, (5-String), Cremona c. 1600 (Suite 6) 9. Courante [3:07] 9. Courante [3:24] 10. Sarabande [4:37] 10. Sarabande [3:41] Baroque bow by John Waterhouse, after Tononi? Italy c. 1725 11. Bourrée I & II [4:00] 11. Bourrée I & II [6:24] 12. Gigue [3:15] 12. Gigue [2:49]

Suite No. 5 in , BWV 1011 Suite No. 6 in , BWV 1012 13. Prélude [6:36] 13. Prelude [4:56] 14. Allemande [7:09] 14. Allemande [8:49] 15. Courante [2:35] 15. Courante [3:42] About David Watkin: 16. Sarabande [3:39] 16. Sarabande [4:59] 17. I & II [5:34] 17. Gavotte I & II [4:55] ‘He not only brings that dedicated scholarly view of playing characteristic 18. Gigue [2:29] 18. Gigue [4:13] of period instrument specialists, but he plays with such huge commitment‘ Sir Charles Mackerras, BBC Magazine Total playing time [68:19] Total playing time [76:42]

‘Hushed and flawless Bach’ The Observer Johann Sebastian Bach: Cello Suites suite, for example features an extended BWV 1007-1012 dominant pedal with a chain of suspensions in two upper voices – a major mode Bach spent nearly his whole life in the version of those in the opening chorus of service of the Lutheran Church. Except the St John Passion, BWV 245. As well as for brief visits to Dieterich Buxtehude blurring the sacred and secular, Bach also (1637-1707) in Lübeck and Frederick the saw no distinction in meaning between Great (1712-1786) at Potsdam, he spent his largest- and smallest-scale works. In it in an area of a few dozen kilometres. fact the limitations of four fingers and four But for a couple of years from 1721 he strings seem no limitation at all to Bach. was Kapellmeister at the Calvinist court The Cello Suites are, in Wilfrid Mellers’ of Köthen, and the majority of his secular words, ‘[...] an example of Bach’s music hails from this time. Yet even these metamorphosis of a technical problem into works are signed off by Bach: ‘S.D.G.’ – a spiritual experience.’ In the traditions of ‘Soli Deo Gloria’ (Glory to God alone). Biber, Domenico Gabrielli etc. they are Music in metre permeates even not so much unaccompanied as his most profoundly sacred works, ‘self-accompanied’. This music is the alongside elements from and ultimate audience participation ‘[...] popular song – Bach didn't share today's festooned with little time-bombs of demarcation between sacred and secular harmonic potential that tease the listener music, as witness the Sarabande-like to speculate on how they might turn out’ final chorus of the St Matthew Passion, as John Eliot Gardiner puts it. Bach, the BWV 244. skilful lace maker knows exactly what can be pared away to leave the most delicate So it is unsurprising, for instance, that the lattice. chord sequence over a tonic pedal which opens the first Cello Suite is shared with But scholars argue about the warp and weft the opening recitative of the St Matthew of Bach’s musical fabric. Followers of Passion. Musical archetypes found in his Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and large-scale works reappear with similar Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) use resonances throughout these Suites, nineteenth-century terms (like ‘tonality’) often giving them a sense of unity across to trace the relationship between vertical the . The Prelude from the third harmonies, while for others (e.g. Laurence Dreyfus (b. 1952)) his harmony is a result How could he imagine that one day there of the interplay of horizontal lines. A piece might be musicians who would not know like the first Prelude, with almost how to dance a ? He also assumed continuous semiquavers, is so skilfully a familiarity and fluency in figuren, the woven through that it defies this common vocabulary of note patterns and distinction. Even structural and decorative gestures that his decoratio inhabits. Bach notes become hard to distinguish. In often delineated these figures with slurs, Bach we hear a unified creative gesture written in as he composed, not added of inventio (idea), elaboratio (structure), as an afterthought. The figures become decoratio (decoration) and oratio the key to understanding the slurs. The (performance). To his critic Johann Adolph messanza figure (three conjunct notes Scheibe (1708-1776), Bach was producing slurred, one disjunct) in the first Courante, written out improvisations, taking from for instance, could be so casually written ‘[...] the realm of the performer’. Bach by Anna Magdalena precisely because didn’t want to leave decoratio to the of that assumed familiarity. whim of improvisation. For him, like the Orders of Classical architecture, the Prelude proportions and relationship of structure to decoration were crucial. The suites are ‘preluded’ (verb not noun) by music flowing from an improvised Bach is often described as bringing tradition. players, making a virtue out together the Italian and French styles, of a necessity, improvised little links but this was no self-conscious act of between the chords they needed to tune. cultural assimilation. He had grown up By the time it reached the hands of Bach with French Baroque dances. Their ‘preluding’ had become an art in itself. specific characteristics and metrical The first and fourth Preludes follow the implications were in his blood. The model of the first pages of the Well- dances that were central to social and Tempered Clavier, ‘harmony expressed in political life at Versailles were equally pattern’ – more a principle than an central across much of Europe – even archetype. It is simple but complete Cello by Francesco Rugeri, Cremona c. 1670 in German speaking Lutheran courts. even without Gounod’s addition of Whether anyone actually danced to . A plan of keys to visit would the Cello Suites is, of course irrelevant. be enough for the performer once they had established how the first bar’s pattern sinuous movements of the arms and body, works and how it might be varied. In his nonchalant, disjointed and passionate made contrapuntal music Bach enjoys setting him appear so admirable and so charming voices with predictable lines against each that throughout this enchanting dance he other, while the listener gasps in won as many hearts as he attracted anticipation at how the impending spectators.’ (cited in Little and Jenne, clashes might be resolved. In this type Dance and the Music of Bach). Sublime, of Prelude, the ‘harmonic time-bombs’ majestic, contemplative, the sarabande result from pitting the pattern against is in triple time, yet it has two beats per the implications of the harmonic journey, bar (’one, two--’). Too slow a tempo and inverting it, or forcing it to work against the two chords lose their harmonic a pedal. The second and third Preludes cohesion. Like a pair of magnets, the have a more narrative flow, ‘Bach, the force drawing them together depends on Fifth Evangelist’, orating. The Sixth Prelude distance, until at a certain point suddenly combines these two styles, all the time becoming useless. It is this interaction keeping the ebullient character of a between dance metre and harmony which, gigue. The fifth Suite is unique with a like a Maglev train, keeps the music heavily-dotted French Ouverture airborne. Like good Shakespearean verse- conceived on the scale of Bach’s speaking, the metre must be latent . throughout, embodied yet also transcended – a paradox reminiscent of Karl Kraus: ‘It Sarabande is equally fatal to have a system and not to have a system. One must combine both.’ The five dance movements centre around the Sarabande. One breathless Allemande account from 1671 of a solo dancer gives a sense of what French Baroque Each Suite proper opens with an Allemande, dance involved: ‘Now and then he would by Bach’s day already out of date. According express anger and spite with an to Little and Jenne, no Allemande impetuous and turbulent cadence, and choreographies survive, and there are an Cello by Antonio & Hieronymous Amati, (5-String), Cremona c. 1600 then, evoking a sweeter passion by more enormous number of different styles: moderate motions, he would sigh, swoon, reflective, meandering (Suites 1 and 6), let his eyes wander languidly; and certain jumpy, exuberant (Suite 3) and a heavily- dotted French-style (Suite 5). Only the Gigue second and fourth seem ‘typical’. Whichever style he chooses, Bach uses the Little and Jenne distinguish three types of to bridge the chasm between the narrative gigue: the heavier ‘two notes slurred, one world of the Préludes and the more separate’ type which I associate with the strongly felt metre of the other dances. opening of the sixth Brandenburg Concerto (in Suites 1, 2, 3 and the Prelude to 6); the Courante faster rolling type with groups of three under the slur (Suite 4); and the dotted Despite the spelling, these are French type (Suite 5). Although it is unlikely relatives of the virtuosic Italian corrente that Bach knew Purcell’s opera, the G found in Corelli. A ‘running’ or ‘flowing’ major Gigue shares the same ironic dance, metric play is common, sometimes major/minor mode switch of Aeneas’s alternating between 3/4 and 6/8 times. boozy sailors with their ‘vows of returning, The fourth Suite further complicates this to their nymphs on the shore, [minor] ambiguity by alternating duplet and while never intending to visit them triplet quavers. The fifth Suite has the more (no, never!) [major]. only real French Courante of the set, conceived in stately 3/2 time. Performing the Cello Suites

Courtly dances Since hearing the Toccata and in D minor as a child, Bach has had a special After the Sarabande comes a pair of place in my life. From my teens I played courtly dances: Menuets, Bourrées and Bach to my teachers whenever I could, . Of these dances, the Bourrée to the exclusion of all else if possible: was the fastest dance and Menuet the Sharon McKinley, Amarylis Fleming, slowest. In the fourth Suite there is an William and Anthony Pleeth, and extended first Bourrée, and the little (whose 1979 recording second Bourrée, like the A minor was a revelation). Over the years I also Sonata, uses two separate voices but with played them to Gustav Leonhardt, different articulation. The bow dips down Laurence Dreyfus and . At to dab the bottom string while playing 15 my parents commissioned a Baroque sustained notes on the upper string. cello from Clive Morris, which I still use. In the same year I saved up and bought very deliberately exhorts us to listen. If Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s recording which this is a ‘sermon in music’ it is a very came with a free copy of Anna Magdalena’s dramatic one. Even without the benefit manuscript marking the beginning of an of Bach’s rhetorical education, we recognise ongoing journey to find the meaning the act of declamation unfolding throughout: behind this document. long phrases build with sequences and false endings catch us by surprise, the opening One stage on that journey came when I exhortation making unscheduled intrusions played the third Prelude to a class of into the narrative. The ‘waterfall’ creates primary school children. I told them its effect using bariolage – where the bow about Bach’s rhetoric, how it stops near hops between three voices creating the the end, but only to hold up a finger, in illusion of sustained parts, impossible in dramatic pause. I said I had my own reality. ‘story’ for it but I wouldn’t tell them because they might have their own. The third Prelude has long been played in Afterwards they all had to tell their a slow, grand style. Yet one important story and one little boy’s image has source from Bach’s time (Peter Kellner’s) stuck with me. “There’s this man!” marks it Presto. The same Falling Down he began breathlessly, “and he’s going Stairs gesture opens the Well-Tempered to be executed, but he escapes! He runs Clavier Book Two D minor Prelude, away down the road and across some unmarked but always played fast! It is fields, and he comes to a HUGE also found in the cello piccolo obbligato WATERFALL!” That nine year old boy’s in Mein Gläubiges Herz BWV 68 – marked vivid image for the opening build up Presto. The case grows for a more lively and extended dominant pedal section tempo. with its wave-like pattern, seems to me just as valid a response as any published The E flat Suite is unusual in that the home analysis, PhD, or perhaps even Mark key doesn’t resonate well with the cello’s Morris’ fabulously inspiring choreography open strings. This gives the Suite a for the suite Falling Down Stairs. The characteristic resonance, even when trying descending scale and broken arppeggio to generate supporting resonance by opening – which gives Mark Morris his holding down the fingers for as long as title – rather than being an accident, possible. The sarabande principle that the beats in a bar do not have to be the ‘transalpine’ set. Even the more modern same length also extends to the fourth Gallant pair of Gavottes have a strong Prelude. The rise and fall of the jagged French feel. The central Sarabande is for pattern generates a grouping of the eight many listeners one of Bach’s most quavers into 3:2:3, not pairs or fours. On profound utterances. The descending inversion the pattern produces a more steps of angular quavers flow like tears standard stress 4:2:2 (like the hymn ‘Ye suggesting the chromatic ‘cross’ motive Holy Angels Bright’). found in the Well-Tempered Claver Book 1 B minor Fugue. To truly play these figures In Bach’s day the cello had only recently legato, one’s left hand ends up in contortions arrived at today’s tuning of a, d, G, C, so like something from a Grünwald Crucifixion. it should not be surprising that in two of Moreover, because of the partial the Suites, alternative tunings are called transposition required by the tuning, Bach for. The sixth Suite requires a higher fifth is able to specify ‘fingerings’. The Suite is string, while the fifth Suite calls for the full of sophisticated examples of expressive older tuning g,d,G,C – made perhaps by choices and technical decisions, but one tuning up the bottom three strings of the particular example comes in the Sarabande. old B flat tuning rather than down the The opening three bars build up a ‘sighing’ top string in today’s tuning. Either way, pattern with two notes played on one string, the fourth between the top two strings, then crossing to the lower strings. The third and perhaps lower tension, gives the bar repeats the pattern with a larger instrument not only new combinations interval, the heightened third rhetorical of notes and chords, but new timbres, statement. It could easily be played ‘cleanly’ recalling Bach’s fondness for the by changing string after the first note, but sonorities of ‘old fashioned’ instruments Bach/Anna Magdalena specify one string like the d’amore. again for the first two notes. This, along with the all-important legato slur, invites The French flavour of the fifth Prelude a more expressive sigh down the augmented permeates the whole suite, with its fourth. dotted Allemande, French Courante (’noble and restrained’) and French A controversial note appears in the Allemande Gigue, making the Suite the most at bar 25. Anna Magdalena (and probably French of an otherwise typically Bach) write the chord ‘G, D, a flat’ while cadencing into E flat. This ninth breaks many voice with a bigger range than any other of Bach’s own rules, not least being non-keyboard instrument used by Bach. unprepared. Far more obvious would be Its use in the often signifies ‘B flat, D, a flat' for the cadence. Yet archangels or events of heroic proportions. Bach repeats the offending bass note Almost like accounts of the castrato range, in his autograph transcription for lute. or even the huge sweep of Richard Strauss’s Rather than correct his mistake he ‘explains’ horn writing, the effect of a unified tone the dissonance by adding piles of thirds over such a range has a certain nobility, in the lute version to beautiful effect, and Bach clearly enjoyed writing for it. the ‘grain of sand in the oyster’ as John Butt puts it. That these extra notes are A note on the instruments unavailable to the cellist leads me to conclude that Bach’s mistake must be The small five-string cello by Brothers corrected. Amati, Cremona from Amarylis Fleming’s collection, was kindly loaned by the Fleming Bach only used the cello ‘a cinque chords’ Trust and the Royal Academy of Music. This in a handful of Cantatas and the sixth extraordinary instrument was the obvious Suite, but always to great effect. The choice for the sixth Suite, although it is fifth string creates a lot more sympathetic difficult to know exactly what kind of resonance, especially higher overtones. instrument Bach envisaged for the sixth Almost every note on the instrument ‘lights Suite. Anna Magdalena specifies the tuning up’. It can give the instrument a soft on the first stave, but the word ‘piccolo’ plangent sound, (Allemande, Sarabande appears nowhere. Physics dictates the string and the second Gavotte’s Musette drone). length and hence body size – much longer But in fast music the jangling interplay than the Amati’s 25.5 inch string length of overtones makes the instrument and the E string (whether at A=415 or effervesce. Its broader canvas allows A=392) is perilously close to breaking Bach not only to use a higher register point. The cello by Francesco Rugeri, who but to ‘travel’ further with sequences, probably trained with Amati, provides a giving the music a wider harmonic sweep. perfect match. Rather than the normal 2 ½ octave human voice range of four strings, the additional © 2015 David Watkin string gives the instrument a super-human David Watkin including at the Wigmore Hall; the Frick Collection, More titles from Resonus Classics New York; and the Library of Congress, Unaccompanied Bach has taken David Watkin Washington. They have recorded to great Tickle the Minikin: 17th-century music for lyra viol all over Europe, from the Palace of Frederick acclaim the complete quartets of Robert Smith (viola da gamba) RES10132 the Great at Potsdam to the Prague Spring Mendelssohn and Schumann and a Festival. He played three of the Suites as part Beethoven disc (Harmonia Mundi USA), the ‘Robert Smith is an outstanding interpreter, casting of Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach world premiere recording of Mendelssohn’s eloquent and long-breathed contrapuntal lines.’ Pilgrimage, sitting by the font in which Bach Octet original version and quartets by BBC Music Magazine (Instrumental Choice, was baptised, in Eisenach, and featured in Debussy and Ravel (Resonus Classics). 5 stars performance & recording) Gardiner’s TV programme Bach, a Passionate Life. He is a juror for the Leipzig Bach David Watkin has revived the eighteenth- Competition. century practice of realising figured bass (improvising chordal accompaniments) on Fantasticus: Sonnerie & other portraits RES10122 David Watkin studied the cello with William the cello and used it in recordings of Corelli Pleeth, whilst reading Music at Cambridge, with Andrew Manze (Harmonia Mundi USA) ‘The performances of Fantasticus are confident, where he was also a choral scholar. Since then and John Holloway (Novalis) and in Mozart stylish, beautifully articulated and convey a he has been principal cello in some of the with Sir Charles Mackerras and the SCO sense of genuine rapport’ world’s leading ensembles including English (DG) and OAE (Chandos). His writings about Gramophone (Gramophone Editor’s Choice) Baroque Soloists, Orchestre Revolutionnaire this and other aspects of music have been et Romantique (ORR), Orchestra of the Age published by , The Strad and the of Enlightenment (OAE), the Philharmonia Cambridge University Press volume Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Performing Beethoven. © 2015 Resonus Limited Solo recordings include music by Vivaldi, Conducting is now an increasingly important è 2015 Resonus Limited Haydn, Beethoven, and Francis Pott. He has part of his music making. He has conducted Recorded in The Robin Chapel, Edinburgh on 26 March, 19 June, 21-22 June & 10-12 December 2013 Producer, Engineer & Editor: Adam Binks been a soloist at Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, a wide range of repertoire with groups Recorded at 24-bit / 96kHz resolution (DDD) Queen Elizabeth Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York including the Royal Academy of Music, Cover image of David Watkin © Susan Torkington and performed the Schumann Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Instrument and session photography © Resonus Limited

Sir John Eliot Gardiner and ORR at Lincoln Swedish Baroque Orchestra, the Academy of With thanks to the Royal Academy of Music, the Fleming Trust, Simon Nieminski, Center, New York. As a guest artist he has Ancient Music and the Scottish Chamber Rev. Thomas Coupar, The Thistle Foundation, the Robin Chapel and the collaborated with, among others, Robert Levin, Orchestra. He founded the Edinburgh Cockbain family for their generous assistance in making this recording. Fredericka von Stade and the Tokyo Quartet International Cello Continuo Clinic and also teaches at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. RESONUS LIMITED – LONDON – UK As a founder member of the Eroica Quartet [email protected] he has performed all over Europe and the US, www.davidwatkin.com www.resonusclassics.com . RES10147