Giovanna Buccarella - Ligeti, Coggiola, Bareilles, Cassadò: Instantes (Contemporary Music for Cello Solo) (2021)

In the seventeenth century, the idea of writing works for unaccompanied cello was a pioneering one; it had been attempted notably by some Italian musicians, including Domenico Gabrielli. In the eighteenth century, their heritage was received and brought to perfection by Johann Sebastian Bach, with his magnificent Six Suites for unaccompanied cello. These works, however, remained largely unperformed throughout the following century. The few who did know them and appreciate their greatness (such as Robert Schumann) thought them unsuitable to the concert hall, and therefore provided them with piano accompaniments. Following the model of Paganini’s Capriccios for solo violin, similar virtuoso pieces for unaccompanied cello were written in the nineteenth century, but they frequently remained within the domain of the “etudes” (significantly, also many early editions of Bach’s Suites were titled “Etudes”). Only in the twentieth century did the unaccompanied cello acquire a standing of its own in the concert programmes; that century and the following saw the flourishing of the repertoire for unaccompanied cello, as is testified by the works performed in this Da Vinci Classics album. (C.B.)