![]() Although the suites may have been played by Bach himself, one of the orchestra members (e.g. Christian Ferdinand Abel, a famed player of the viola da gamba, cello, and violin), or even the prince, today the occasion for which they were written is uncertain. At the time Bach was surveying all of the expressive and technical possibilities of instruments in works like The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin as well as in these suites, which he apparently did not conceive as an integral whole. For Bach, they mainly represented an opportunity for seeking new paths. Cellists often begin playing the suites as children, and the pieces are required study material. Gautier Capuçon fittingly calls them “ the cellist’s Bible”. 1 in G major for solo cello BWV 1007 is one of the best known of the suites, and if the cello is often compared to the human voice, here it seems to be speaking to us about the very essence of music, Baroque or otherwise. Although we hear a wealth of counterpoint, and the greatest demands are made on the player, the suite is not without a peculiar transparency. Already in the opening Preludium there is almost a hint of magic. ![]() In the text with his recording, the famed viola da gamba and Baroque cello player Wieland Kuijken characterised it as “ the continuum of a time that might not end”, and the American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, winner of a 1985 Grammy for his album of these suites, described it in 2021 as follows: “ I think that movement represents the infinitude of what we have in the natural world. So you think of flow, water, sunlight sparkling on leaves of trees on a fall day. We all can imagine something that is both constant and always changing.” For the later movements, Bach traditionally pairs fast and slow dances. At the centre stands a calm Sarabande, and the suite ends with the pulsating rhythm of a Gigue. ![]() The music of the French composer Henri Dutilleux (1916–2013) built upon the best traditions of French music-Ravel, Debussy, Roussel-and also took inspiration from Bartók and Stravinsky as well as from the visual arts and literature and from Van Gogh and Baudelaire in particular. ![]() He categorically refused to be tied to any school of composition, and all his life he remained a solitary figure with his own striking compositional language. His work also includes a Piano sonata, two symphonies, the Cello concerto 'Tout un monde lointain' (A whole distant world), the Violin concerto 'L'arbre des songes' (The tree of dreams) and the string quartet 'Ainsi la nuit' (Thus the night).He became a representative of the opposite, more traditional current from that favoured by the avant-garde composer Pierre Boulez. Henri Dutilleux was internationally acclaimed for his work, winning prizes such as the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society and the UNESCO's International Rostrum of Composers, among many others. A quotation from Bartok's piece 'Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta' can be noticed at the end of the first verse. The whole set requires the lowest strings of the Cello to be turned lower: G string to F sharp and C string to B flat. Henri Dutilleux composed the first part of this volume for the celebration and added the final two pieces later in 1976. It was first performed in an audition by the latter in 1982. “Written on the occasion of Paul Sacher's birthday, this 3 Strophes in the name of Sacher features three Cello pieces composed by Henri Dutilleux and reviewed by Mstislav Rostropovitch.
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