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Amazon.co.uk Review
Bach must be one of the most "arranged" composers around but then he himself was not averse to carrying out some nifty adaptations of his own works and those of others. Here, viola da gamba player Hille Perl awards herself some extra Bach repertoire by appropriating the Fifth Solo Cello Suite, by transforming a sonata for violin and keyboard into one for gamba and lute (no doubt encouraged by the fact that Bach had himself reworked it from a lute suite by his contemporary Silvius Leopold Weiss), and by opening up one of Bach's sonatas for gamba and harpsichord into a concerto-like piece for violin, gamba and continuo. With Bach having only left three sonatas for her instrument, who can blame her? The results are both convincing and enlightening: the cello suite is much less angular on the resonant gamba, its spread chords coming over as more natural; the "Weiss" finds a new gentleness and lyricism; and the sonata acquires a foot-tapping Brandenburg-ish feel. Above all, however, one gets the enjoyable impression here of a sensitive musician in love with Bach's music and even more in love with playing it both on her own and with others, a feeling greatly enhanced by her refreshingly thoughtful but unpretentious insert-notes on matters of interpretation. --Lindsay Kemp
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very enjoyable disc,
By
This review is from: Bach: Works for Viola da gamba (Audio CD)
I really like this disc. It is a varied programme of three works by Bach, all arranged in slightly unfamiliar ways for viola da gambe which is very appropriate to Bach who was an inveterate arranger of his own and other people's music. They are the fifth Cello Suite played on solo gamba, a Violin Sonata arranged for gamba and lute, and one of Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba arranged for two gambas, violin, lute and harp. It's a very pleasing and varied programme of very enjoyable, high-quality music.
The musicianship is excellent. Hille Perl is a very fine gamba player, which shows strongly in the solo Suite, which has a smoother, more mellow feel than in many cello versions. It is a piece I love and I am very glad to have a different and enjoyable take on it. The ensemble pieces are excellently - the harp is played by Andrew Lawrence-King, which is always a guarantee of quality - and again very enjoyable new views of familiar pieces. In short, it's top-class music played beautifully by top-class musicians. Very warmly recommended.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very enjoyable disc,
By Sid Nuncius - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bach: Works for Viola da gamba (Audio CD)
I really like this disc. It is a varied programme of three works by Bach, all arranged in slightly unfamiliar ways for viola da gambe which is very appropriate to Bach who was an inveterate arranger of his own and other people's music. They are the fifth Cello Suite played on solo gamba, a Violin Sonata arranged for gamba and lute, and one of Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba arranged for two gambas, violin, lute and harp. It's a very pleasing and varied programme of very enjoyable, high-quality music.
The musicianship is excellent. Hille Perl is a very fine gamba player, which shows strongly in the solo Suite, which has a smoother, more mellow feel than in many cello versions. It is a piece I love and I am very glad to have a different and enjoyable take on it. The ensemble pieces are excellently - the harp is played by Andrew Lawrence-King, which is always a guarantee of quality - and again very enjoyable new views of familiar pieces. In short, it's top-class music played beautifully by top-class musicians. Very warmly recommended. 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Win a Few, Lose a Few!,
By Giordano Bruno - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bach: Works for Viola da gamba (Audio CD)
Remember me? I'm the guy that hates to hear Bach performed on a modern grand piano. Bach knew his stuff. He knew his instruments, what they could do and what they couldn't. Not just their technical strengths and weaknesses -- their ranges, their limitations in terms of chromatics versus "just" tuning, how fast even the best player could be expected to play -- but also their emotive/affective capabilities. His six suites for solo cello and cello piccolo are fine examples of how perfectly Bach matched music to instrument. Yes yes, I'm aware that he recycled music, including one of the cello suites for lute, but could you please, dear listeners, search your bosoms and honestly recall how profoundly "right" the cello suites sound on... cello!But now, here's Hille Perl, to whose performances I'm currently enthralled, playing the Fifth Cello Suite on a viola da gamba. And you know what? I don't like it. I don't think it "works", even though the gamba and the cello look and sound enough alike that "casual" listeners don't know the difference. Ms Perl is a very skilled gambist, one of the best in the modern world, but her performance of this suite sounds labored and at times awkward, and alas, dreary in comparison to the performance of Ophelie Gailliard on baroque cello or Jean-Guihen Queyras on modern cello. What Hille Perl effectively demonstrates, with this performance, is the "inferiority" of the gamba, at least for playing virtuoso cello music. But I've also asserted the inferiority of the cello for playing gamba music. There are half a dozen recording of Bach's sonatas for gamba and harpsichord, played by cellists with modern piano accompaniment, and none of them are as zesty and dynamic as my dear old CD of Jordi savall on gamba and Ton Koopman on harpsichord. Bach! Knew! What! He! Wanted! to Hear! Hille Perl comes closer to the authenticity of a pleasing musical experience on the Trio in A major, originally for violin and harpsichord, here played on gamba and lute. Still, there's something hesitant and almost shapeless about this "arrangement". It lacks momentum. And that's the serious shortcoming of the "trope" of the single gamba sonata in G minor, here recomposed for two gambas, harp, and lute. What Bach composed has a kind of onrushing sprightliness, perpetuo mobile, and clarity. This version bogs down, slogs down, muddies the affect. Somebody is sure to chide me for being rigid and antagonistic to experimentation. It's not so. Check my reviews of Christina Pluhar's L'Arpeggiata, for instance. I love pushing the frontiers of Early Music. But not every experiment succeeds. |
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