Bach - Sonatas & Partitas, BWV1001 - 1006 - Luolajan-Mikkola

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Interesting but not wholly successful

This is a good recording in many ways, but gosh, I find it disconcerting!  These are the Violin Sonatas and Partitas but transposed for and played on the baroque cello - an interesting idea which I was keen to investigate.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect; what I got was a generally very well performed set of pieces but which don't quite work for me.

The first thing to say is that the overall sound is quite lovely; Markku Luolajan-Mikkola's cello sounds wonderfully rich and full in a resonant acoustic, and it's beautifully captured in the excellent recording.  The playing is remarkably virtuosic at times (although intonation isn't always as secure as it might be) and the interpretations seem pretty true to the spirit of Bach to me - all of which makes it hard for me to put my finger on why I find the Sonatas and Partitas played on the cello so disorientating, but I do.

Partly, it's just in my head, I suspect.  I'm so used to hearing these magnificent pieces played on the violin that the change in register and tone is hard to adjust to.  Even allowing for that, though, I think there's something more.   Bach really understood the instruments he wrote for, and although many of his works can be very successfully transcribed for other instruments, the Sonatas and Partitas have a spare, austere quality which suits the violin perfectly, and doesn't sit so well on the cello.  There's a sense of strain in places as the cello tries to perform light, skipping phrases which it wasn't really built for.  Also, the resonance and depth which make the cello suites such a joy don't really go with the emotional tone of many of these pieces, so the great Chaconne from the D minor Partita, for example, actually seems to me to lose some of its magnificent intellectual and emotional impact here.  It seems perverse - the cello is such an expressive instrument that you'd expect the opposite - but for me it's true. 

This is a difficult one to sum up and one which leaves me a bit divided.  Markku Luolajan-Mikkola is a wonderful musician with Phantasm and  this is well performed and an interesting idea interesting, so others may find it suits them better than it suits me - these things are very personal, after all.  I think I'd suggest giving this a try, despite my considerable reservations.