Fanfare 1. Review
Five stars: A most revealing and rewarding survey of Bach’s solo cello suites

 BACH 6 Suites for Solo Cello, BWV 1007–1012  Henrik Dam Thomsen (vc)  OUR 8226921/2 (134:25) Reviewed from a WAV download: 44.1 kHz/16-bit

In the long-running litany of jokes about violas and viola players is this one that asks, “How are a violist’s fingers like lightning?” Answer, “They never strike the same place twice.”
Well, in back-to-back issues—September-October (48:1) and now November-December (48:2)—two cellists have proved the exception to the rule. Lightning can strike the same place twice and so can a cellist’s fingers. This is quite extraordinary, really: two complete surveys of Bach’s Solo Cello Suites performed by two of the most accomplished cellists I can recall hearing in recent memory.
What makes this serendipitous coincidence remarkable is that each of these artists—previously Eric Kutz, and here Henrik Dam Thomsen—from different places and backgrounds and following musically diverse pursuits—should happen to converge at the same moment to record Bach’s cello suites and, in so doing, to arrive at a convergence of opinion as to matters of execution and style that’s strikingly similar.
Both artists have opted for instruments updated to modern standards and have made clear in their approach to performance practices that they believe the manifest glories of this music are for all, not the exclusive property of the HIP orthodoxy. I couldn’t help but wonder as I listened to Kutz and then Thomsen if it was possible that the swamp fever had finally broken after all these long years. Were we on the verge of loosening the HIP’s grip on Baroque and Classical-period music, and returning to a time before two vibrato-less violins, a squawking oboe, an asthmatic horn, and an anemic cello constituted an “orchestra?”
One can hope. Tastes do change, and these things do tend to run in cycles. But the dominion that HIP has held over us has lasted for a very long time. Has it, I wonder, finally begun to abate? I’m not sure whether to call performances such as these by Kutz and Thomsen “post-HIP” or “pre-HIP,” for I believe we’re all old enough to remember a time when this style of playing was once in vogue.
I’m not going back to the 1930s when, with all of his deeply felt expression, beauty of tone, and technical command, Pablo Casals took liberties with Bach’s music that today raise our style-conscious eyebrows. No, I’m going back to more recent times, when the likes of Janos Starker, Pierre Fournier, and Paul Tortelier gave us patrician performances of the suites that brought out the music’s nobility and sense of the sublime. And even more recently than that, I’m thinking of the robust and revealing readings of the suites given by a younger generation of players such as Yo-Yo Ma, Antonio Meneses, Steven Isserlis, Truls Mørk, Mischa Maisky, and Jean-Guihen Queyras (long my favorite), all of whom, playing on modern instruments and with varying degrees of deference to their HIP colleagues, have given us illuminating versions of the suites based on their own understanding of what “informed practice” entails.
Here we have yet another such reading of the suites, and here’s what cellist Henrik Dam Thomsen has to say on the subject: “When one plays the suites, one is obliged to undertake many choices with regard to all the knowledge about Baroque music now available.” And he is quoted in the album note as saying that “he felt it was important to remain true to his own instrument and perform on his regular cello, a Francesco Ruggieri built in 1680, using modern strings, played with a conventional bow, and tuned to the usual 442 Hz. These choices ensured the best homogeneity for the suites as a whole.”
The 442 Hz caught my eye because it’s not the “usual” American A = 440 Hz. While the extra two Hz doesn’t affect the audible pitch, per se—unless one has the hearing of an owl—it may account for the bit of extra brightness that seems to illuminate the golden tone Thomsen draws from his Ruggieri cello. That could also be attributed, however, to the glowing acoustics of the Baroque Garnisons Church in Copenhagen where Thomsen’s performances were “beautifully captured in the immersive DXD format by engineer Mikkel Nymand.
I mentioned Casals earlier, and while it’s not my intent to draw a direct correspondence between the famed Catalan cellist, who was first to record the complete suites in the 1930s, and Henrik Dam Thomsen, I would have to say that in listening to Thomsen’s readings and following the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe scores published by Breitkopf und Härtel, Thomsen captures the spirit, if not the letter, of Casals, more closely than any other modern-day cellist I’ve heard.
What, exactly, do I mean by that? Well, for starters, Thomsen’s rhythm is flexible, but not in an arbitrary way that disrupts the continuity of the line. To the contrary, he employs the principle of agogics to bring out the notes that give shape and form to the phrases. As to Thomsen’s phrasing and articulation, he treats the printed slurs over groupings of notes that create recurrent patterns of notes fairly freely, slurring groups of notes where no slurs are indicated and taking separate bow strokes for groups of notes where slurs are indicated. But again, as with his flexible rhythm, Thomsen finds patterns that are different than those suggested by the editor, and that might actually be closer to what Bach intended.
For example, beginning in the second half of the second full bar of the Allemande in the Suite No. 1, Thomsen switches from the slurred notes indicated by the editor to bowing the notes separately. Now, if you look at the Peters published version of the original manuscript in Bach’s own handwriting, you will see that at that exact same spot—second half of the second full bar—for the next several notes, Bach discontinues the slurs. So, if you want historical accuracy or HIP, albeit on a modern cello, Thomsen’s your man.
What much of this goes to prove is that many of the liberties taken by Thomsen—liberties we often use the word “Romantic” or “romanticized” in a deprecating way to describe performances that don’t adhere to the HIP catechism—may, in reality, reflect actual, as opposed to imagined, historical practice.
Whatever your feelings or opinions on this subject might be, I submit to you that Henrik Dam Thomsen’s Bach Suites for Solo Cello are insightful readings that make for illuminating, revealing, and rewarding listening. If you’re of the conviction that no number of recordings of the suites is too many, then I would strongly urge you to consider this one as the next addition to your collection. Jerry Dubins

Five stars: A most revealing and rewarding survey of Bach’s solo cello suites