Heinrich Schiff - Johann Sebastian Bach: Cello Suites (2005) 2CDs
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 527 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 287 Mb | Scans ~ 47 Mb
Genre: Classical | Label: EMI Classics | # 7243 5 86534 2 7 | Time: 02:04:56
EAC | FLAC | Tracks (Cue&Log) ~ 527 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 287 Mb | Scans ~ 47 Mb
Genre: Classical | Label: EMI Classics | # 7243 5 86534 2 7 | Time: 02:04:56
In the '80s there were those listeners who thought that Heinrich Schiff might redeem cello performance practice from fatal beauty and lethal elegance. Aside from the burly and brawny Rostropovich, more and more cellists were advocating a performance style whose ideals were perfect intonation and graceful phrasing. In some repertoire, say, Fauré, these are perfectly legitimate goals. In other repertoire, Beethoven and Brahms, say, it is a terrible mistake. In Bach's Cello Suites, as the fay and fragile Yo-Yo Ma recordings make clear, it was a terminal mistake. Not so in Schiff's magnificently muscular 1984 recordings of the suites: Schiff's rhythms, his tempos, his tone, his intonation, and especially his interpretations were anything but fay or fragile. In Schiff's performance, Bach's Cello Suites are not the neurasthenic music of a composer supine with dread and despair in the dark midnight of the soul, but the forceful music of a mature composer in full control of himself and his music.