About
When listening to the first bars of the prelude to the Suite in G Major for solo cello by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), there will be few listeners who will not quickly recognize the melody. Some will most likely be recalled to some advertisement, others to some cinematic passage, and others to a given historical moment. This work is part of a set of six Suites for cello, a pioneering collection in the field of repertoire for solo cello that requires a great diversity of technical resources of the instrument, explored throughout the different movements, and which, as a whole, ends up constituting in itself a compendium for cello technique. These pages of complex delicacy are brought to life in this recording by Portuguese cellist Filipe Quaresma, with the sensitivity and knowledge of an artist who deeply knows this repertoire — the result of an already intense and wide-ranging career, distinguished by his specialization in different repertoires. The cello recorded here is an instrument built by the Italian luthier Domenico Montagnana (1686–1750) — interestingly, just one year younger than J. S. Bach and who died in the same year as the composer — a contemporary of the music in question. Furthermore, this instrument carries with it a very significant symbolic and intangible legacy, as it once belonged to the renowned Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia (1885–1950).