Myles Jordan - J.S. Bach: Cello Suites BWV1007-1009 (2008)

Pity the listener who relies on the perfectly ordinary cover of this disc of Bach cello suites and picks it up -- or orders it after seeing a thumbnail photo on the Internet -- expecting a conventional recording of these famous pieces for solo cello. It is anything but. Baroque cellist Myles Jordan, a member of the DaPonte String Quartet, gets you closer to the heart of the matter on the back cover, promising "A New Interpretation Based on Early Sources." Even that doesn't quite cover it. Jordan virtually discards the vision of the cello suites that has come down to modern cellists from, as he quite rightly points out, Pablo Casals. He departs from tradition in no fewer than four respects, relying in each case on testimonies contemporary with Bach's career. First, Jordan chooses unorthodox tempos in several of the dances; the courantes and the bourrées in particular are turned in to stately processions. This sharply shifts the mood of the whole in the direction of a deliberate reflectiveness. Second, he plays several movements pizzicato. Third, he adds improvised harmony parts and even contrapuntal lines, extrapolating from his own conviction that the art of continuo playing involved considerable improvisation. Fourth, and least startling, he uses a five-string violoncello piccolo. All these innovations are tied into a symbolic interpretation of the work of the sort that has become common: Bach, according to Jordan, intended the cello suites as a sort of memorial to his first wife, Maria Barbara, who died shortly before their composition -- and as a sort of blueprint for his impending remarriage. It will have to be left to specializing scholars to determine the accuracy of Jordan's hypotheses, and the average listener is apt to be left with confirmation of the idea that you can find in Bach whatever you look for. The arguments pertaining to tempo seem the most convincing, especially one linking Bach's allemandes, which tend to contain a little flurry of notes at certain phrase ends, with a type of allemande resembling the game of Musical Chairs. The ones relying on the nature of continuo playing are perhaps less persuasive, inasmuch as the cello suites were descended not from the continuo-accompanied sonata but, like the violin sonatas and partitas, from virtuoso traditions of the seventeenth century. The overall musical impression is that the sheer weight of departures from tradition results in performances that feel a bit overstuffed; music that seems to draw its power from concentration is diluted by all the variety. But Jordan is a sensitive and technically able player, and not one of his ideas is gauche. Historical-performance ideas that seem commonplace today sounded strange when they first appeared, and no stranger than what Jordan does with these suites. One suspects Jordan won't have the last word on many of these matters, but he's certainly going to start a lot of conversations.