Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites Performed on Double Bass

 (35 customer reviews)

Judging by how quickly this new Sony release has climbed the Amazon.com ranks, barely a week after its announced release, we can reasonably expect that Edgar Meyer's performance on double bass of the three Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello will be a classical hit, maybe even a "chart-buster." For solo music this cerebral and sublime, this may represent a "first."

If so, it will be because of Meyer's staggering musicianship. I have yet to see any Sony marketing of this album, much less a published critical review, and hope that Sony chooses not to market it as "the new classical music" or label it as "crossover" (bad decisions that Sony has made in the past).

All great cellists at some point in their careers have committed performances of the complete Cello Suites to recorded posterity, beginning at least as early as Pablo Casals. While my personal favorites happen to be those of Janos Starker ans Mstislav Rostropovich (two rather opposite interpretive...Read more

When I first read of this album, my immediate thought was that it was a gimmick. Playing the Cello Suites at pitch on a bass? That was worse than transposing them down. Bassists, like other instrumentalists whose chosen instrument doesn't have a huge solo repetoir, often find themselves on the edge of gimmickery when trying to extend extend the instrument's catalog.But Edgar Meyer is no ordinary bassist. He has a facility and a tone in the upper register that few can touch, and on hearing his interpretation I became a convert. These perfomances aren't going to please everyone; as others have noted, Meyer's dry tone is very different from the Romantic-era vibrato we have come to exopect in solo violin and cello. But it can be argued (as others have done) that it is an entirely appropriate approach for Bach's era. (Of course playing these suites on bass would have been altogether impossible on the bass viols of Bach's era.)Regardless of whether Meyer's approach is historically...Read more

Edgar Meyer is the most talented classical basist of the 20th century. His newest CD, "Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites Performed on Double Base", is outstanding, wonderful, amazing, etc. Meyer plays these pieces with the same sort of feeling that Casals exuded, the same intonation Du Pre mastered, and as much robust and daring conviction as Rostropovich used . Meyer's unique phrasing is refreshing and his ingenuity is remarkable. Although the music takes on a heavier cloak, one might have a hard time believing that these suites are being performed on a double bass (disregarding the fact that the music is an octave lower). Meyer's genius is quite apparent when the listener realizes that since the music was written for a cello, not a bass, a one inch space between b and c on a cello turns into a three inch one on the bass. This means that to play the music up to tempo (which he quite eloquently does) Meyer had to play through many string crossings and works...Read more