Track Listing

1. Suite for Solo Cello No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008: I. Prelude
2. II. Allemande
3. III. Courante
4. IV. Sarabande
5. V. Menuett I & II
6. VI. Gigue
7. Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: I. Prelude
8. II. Allemande
9. III. Courante
10. IV. Sarabande
11. V. Menuett I & II
12. VI. Gigue
13. Suite for Solo Cello No. 5 in C minor, BWV 1011: I. Prelude
14. II. Allemande
15. III. Courante
16. IV. Sarabande
17. V. Gavotte I & II
18. VI. Gigue

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42376 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2000-08-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Amazon.com
The double bass only recently began to be regarded as a solo instrument, largely thanks to outstanding players who inspired composers to write for it. Until then, its repertoire consisted mostly of transcriptions, usually made by bassists themselves. Edgar Meyer, renowned as a bass virtuoso as well as a versatile, multifaceted composer, has now transcribed the Bach Cello Suites, three of which he plays on this disc. It is a brave and noble undertaking and a remarkable achievement. His command of instrument and bow, including a splendid chord-technique, is awesome, his articulation clean and variable, his intonation impeccable, although, presumably for stylistic reasons, he uses hardly any vibrato. This makes the sound hollow and remote, especially in the low register, which undercuts the expressiveness of the music and Meyer's obvious passionate love for it. His phrasing has a spoken quality; he builds up great climaxes and produces a wonderful resonance with the open strings, changing the Suites' tonality up or down a tone to fit the bass. He favors slow Minuets, and sometimes gets a bit ponderous, but gives the fast dances a lively bounce. His sense of structure and voice-leading is admirable, his rhythm supple but rock-steady, though he inexplicably cuts short some final long notes before repeats. Forget the sound of the great cellists you associate with these works, and listen to this record with a fresh ear. --Edith Eisler

Customer Reviews

It was only a matter of time.
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 approaches), Meyer's interpretation would appear to come closest to that of Casals: "straight up," neither overly romantic nor too lean, with absolute rhythmic and intonational accuracy.

By transposing these suites downward appropriately to take advantage of the sonorities of the double bass, Meyer has not made his task as performer any easier from a purely technical standpoint, but has given the music a gravitas, if you like, an intentional darkening and tonal enrichment, that I find to be entirely fitting for these solo-instrument masterpieces.

Meyer yields to no one in what he accomplishes here. Despite the far greater navigational difficulties of this instrument as compared to a cello, he takes no short cuts in the double and triple stops, while achieving on stopped strings resonant (and resinous) sonorities which, written for the cello, often are for open strings. And he has all the requisite speed and rhythmic accuracy and elan that one could ask for in the dance movements of the suites. There may have been double bass versions of these suites performed and recorded in the past, but they are now all rendered irrelevant by this release.

It is not unreasonable to expect that Meyer will go on to commit the remaining suites (no.'s 3, 4 and 6) to a follow-up release, and that Sony will likely release a double album at that time. But you are shortchanging your enjoyment of this staggering instrumentalist if you choose to wait it out until that happens. This disc is simply too good for that wait. Get it now, and enjoy it time after time until the second disc comes out. And then enjoy that one as well.

Bob Zeidler

Moving
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 appropriate it is still and outstanding and moving performance. Highly recommended to all bass players, and to all open minded Bach fans as well.

Once again Edgar Meyer has turned out a remarkable CD
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 out creative fingerings. His double stops were clear and in tune, as is the rest of his playing. Once again Edgar Meyer has turned out a remarkable CD. To me, this is what music is all about, an astonishingly talented person recording/playing beautiful music in a new and groundbreaking way.