Question by Zeke este dragostea mea!: What do you think of Mstislav Rostropovich – Bach suite 1 III. Courante?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXtpN4oXr5Y
My idol. RIP the best cellist of all time.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Doctor John
wonderful BUT the Casals is the definitive recording
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
the italian says
A star to you for putting things in the right perspective and thanks god nobody showed up so far to say that YoYoMa is the best ever.
Casals and Rostropovich belong to another category, to another planet possibly. Fournier and DuPre are just a bit below. My opinion is that Casals is probably more Bach-oriented and the job he did on analyzing and reorganizing the cello suites is beyond imagination. A lot of things we know today about the symmetries of dance-sequence and the order of keys in those 6 works is his pure credit. Rostro was I'd say wider in his experience; he lived in the years of Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky. He and pianist Sviatoslav Richter were involved in the fertile atmosphere of russian music, before Stalin tightened the rules upon political propaganda in culture. His activity as a conductor was nearly as relevant as the cellist's one.
One technical tip on the way those above-mentioned giants used the bow: length, firmness, clear-cut sounds, solid and net trembles, paying respect to each and every note. The effect is driven in by techniques, not the reverse.