Bach: Cello Suites Nos.1-6 [CD]

This is a reissue by Hyperion of the Isserlis Bach Suites recording from three years ago. Please note the original three reviews linked Bach: The Cello Suites.

I would like to add some critical response to the original issue, to lend a bit more perspective.

The American reviewer David Hurwitz at Classics Today.com felt that the playing was marred by production issues: "Quite honestly, had this been a competently produced set I would have no problem giving it a very strong recommendation."

Fanfare magazine's Colin Anderson was more favorable: "This is music that Isserlis seems to have lived with for many years. His playing has familiarity but not contempt (probably impossible to tire of this music, which must have boundless possibilities). Isserlis's pointing is lively, his tempos anything but moribund; these are, after all, suites of dances; even the Sarabandes must have a sense of movement, which they do here but without sacrificing their eloquence. The opening of the Suite in D Minor (No. 2) is especially lovely: a searching beginning." Anderson directly contradicts Hurwitz in adding, "This Hyperion release is impressive and stimulating for the high production values, for the recording quality that offers a one-to-one between Bach and the listener, for Isserlis's written annotation, and above all for his searching and intimate traversal of music that gets better and better the more one engages with it. Having spent much time listening to this issue and reading Isserlis's insights, I can report that it has been time well spent: indeed, I seem to have moved closer to the music and all its enchanting mystery."

Finally Gramophone Magazine awarded it an editor's choice selection and an award for best instrumental recording in 2007. Lindsay Kemp's review states "For Isserlis the Suites suggest a meditative cycle on the life of Christ, rather like Biber's Mystery Sonatas. He points out that this is "a personal feeling, not a theory", but it has to be said that once you know that he is thinking of the Agony in the Garden during the darkly questioning Second Suite (the five stark chords towards the end of the Prélude representing the wounds of Christ), the Crucifixion in the wearily troubled Fifth or the Resurrection in the joyous Sixth, it adds immense power and interest to his performances.

But then, this is also the most wonderful cello-playing, surely among the most consistently beautiful to have been heard in this demanding music, as well as the most musically alert and vivid. Not everyone will like the brisk tempi (though the Allemandes, for instance, gain in architectural coherence), but few will fail to be charmed by Isserlis's sweetly singing tone, his perfectly voiced chords and superb control of articulation and dynamic - the way the final chord of the First Prélude dies away is spellbinding. There are so many other delights: the subtle comings and goings of the Third Prélude, the nobly poised Fifth Allemande, the swaggering climax that is the Sixth Gigue - I cannot mention them all. Suffice to say that Isserlis's Bach is a major entrant into an already highly distinguished field, and a disc many will want to return to again and again."