Mstislav Rostropovich: Bach Explained?

/ The Little Martian

//The Great Escape to the Black Hole (3)//

St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, Germany

The Bach Cello Suites, some call them the Bible or Holy Grail of the cello repertoire. But to me, they are just the biggest mystery in the universe.

9 years ago, I bumped into this video recording of the Bach Cello Suites by Mstislav Rostropovich filmed in 1991.  What drew me to this recording was not the playing of the Suites itself. It was the comments made by Rostropovich at the beginning of the cycle and before each Suite. After I watched all his comments in one session, all I could utter was “Uh-Oh…”. I didn’t understand a word he said. But I immediately realized I was in big trouble. This set of Suites seemed to be some bottomless black hole beyond the words spoken by Rostropovich.

Title of the commentaries1 in the video:

Introduction
Suite No. 1: Lightness
Suite No. 2: Sorrow And Intensity
Suite No. 3: Brilliance
Suite No. 4: Majesty And Opacity
Suite No. 5: Darkness
Suite No. 6: Sunlight

Today, I still don’t understand Bach’s music. Even more so, I still have a difficult time figuring out Rostropovich’s playing. But as I watched his comment for the Fifth Suite again just now, his words seemed to resonate inside me a little more.

One thing dawned on me during this revisit of the videos. Rostropovich recorded this Bach Cello Suites cycle at Basilique Sainte Madeleine in Vézelay, France. In the Introduction, he recalled his encounter with Pablo Casals. I remember there was a video of Casals playing Bach Suite in a church too. So I looked it up again. Wham! That church was Abbaye Saint Michel de Cuxa in Codalet, also in France. Coincidence?

Additional Information:

  1.  “Bach, Rostropovich ‎– Cello Suites” DVD Release Information on Discog.com: https://www.discogs.com/Bach-Rostropovich-Cello-Suites/release/1028872
  2. Basilique Sainte Madeleine website: https://www.basiliquedevezelay.org/
  3. Video tour of Basilique Sainte Madeleine by FMJweb: https://youtu.be/wIKnGyAizUA
  4. Abbaye Saint Michel de Cuxa website: https://abbaye-cuxa.com/ which has virtual tours and a page about the Pablo Casals Festival.

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