He couldn’t sustain the low-note resonance at a slow tempo and still articulate a long line. “I quickly realized,” he recalled, “that that just does not work for me on the violin.” Played on a cello, this Prelude tends to take on what Gandelsman called a “majestic quality.” The phrases leap octaves, beginning at the lowest string and jumping to the highest - which, at an unhurried pace, creates a foundational resonance. “To bring a sense of joy and abandon and a sense of closing to these beautiful 15 minutes of discovery.” “I think of the way my friend Martin Hayes” - a renowned fiddler - “might approach a gigue and vary inflections and articulations in a natural way,” Gandelsman said. But that fleeting celebration, he added, is “pure joy.” Seen from that perspective, he said, the suite’s final movement, the Gigue, is a “party moment” - albeit a brief one. He gives the sections the feel of “a real set of dances,” like something an Irish fiddler would play. “But there’s something about the way the violin resonates that just kind of propels everything forward.”
“I don’t want to suggest that a viola or cello can’t do these things,” he said.
#Yo yo ma bach cello suite 1 g major violin sheet full#
The First Suite, Gandelsman said, “has this just incredible sense of lightness, and also discovery” - a tone set immediately in the Prelude, airy and full of naïve wonder in his reading. Here they are, with side-by-side comparisons of his recording and ones by Yo-Yo Ma, Pablo Casals and Anner Bylsma. In the video call, he focused on three sections to discuss his approach. He avoided listening to recordings - though he said he had been inspired by Paolo Pandolfo’s viola da gamba rendering, “maybe the most radical in a way” - and tried to internalize the music to get at its dance-y “sense of freedom.”
That’s what he worked toward in his interpretation: a folk flavor. The suites did, however, require idiosyncrasies like scordatura (alternative tuning) in the Fifth Suite and the use of a five-string violin in the Sixth - both common in folk music. While the violin solos are most difficult in their fugues and implied counterpoint, he said, the cello works more or less keep multiple voices within the same line. The project followed his recording of the sonatas and partitas. “But there are at least three 19th-century editions of transcriptions, and they feel so good on the violin.” “It was looked at as a novelty gimmick,” he said. After that, he may return to this endlessly explorable composer, but his focus will be shifting to a new project: This Is America, a set of 22 new violin works commissioned from the likes of Angélica Negrón, Tyshawn Sorey and Tomeka Reid, with premieres rolling out starting this summer.īut before that, he joined a video call after the Bargemusic concerts to discuss the cello suites, which he said he had been discouraged from recording. He’ll be back on the barge, June 24 and 25, with more Bach: the sonatas and partitas for solo violin. Bargemusic on Friday was his return because of ongoing safety measures, it was a modest one, with a distanced crowd in an already small space, and the six suites spread over two evenings instead of his usual one. Gandelsman’s recording came out in February 2020, and he had a concert planned at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan that March. He treats the suites as six enclosed spaces, tracing long arcs through each one, the sections blurring as he plays them through without pausing. But his approach is singular: feather-light and rooted in dance and folk music. Gandelsman isn’t the only violinist to have tackled these classic works Rachel Podger recorded them in 2019, a year before he released his own set. At times the performance had the improvisatory feel of folk music, but it was in fact a survey of Bach’s towering six cello suites - transformed, with foot-tapping joy, for a smaller string instrument. Inside, though, Bargemusic - the tiny concert hall docked in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo - was alight with the liveliness of belowdecks entertainment as a small audience rode out the storm to the fiddling sounds of Johnny Gandelsman’s violin.
With an ear for dance and a new five-string violin, Johnny Gandelsman set out to transform a towering classic.īargemusic was rocking last Friday evening as rain fell heavily outside, casting the view of Lower Manhattan in gray. The views of Manhattan from there are great! Regards, Lenīach’s Cello Suites, Now on Violin, With a Folksy Feel We've been over to where Bargemusic is located taking the ferry at Pier 11 across the East River but have never attended an event-they did operas in the past.
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