RECORD REVIEWS
Why is Stereophile publishing its fourth review (at least) in three years of a recording of Bach’s Six Cello Suites? Partly it’s because the suites, which were composed ca. 1720 but remained in obscurity until a young Pablo Casals rediscovered them in a secondhand sheet music store in Barcelona in 1890, contain some of the most joyous, moving, and profound music in the Western classical music canon. It’s also because these two volumes, which present Grammy Award–winning cellist Zuill Bailey’s second recorded exploration of the suites (the first was on Telarc more than two decades ago), abound in astoundingly beautiful musicianship illumined by fresh insights and superb engineering.
Bailey offers far more sensitive and nuanced playing than he did on his first effort. Note, for example, how the gentleness and grace that surface in the opening Prelude of the beloved first suite are balanced by a willingness to let go and dance tastefully in the swinging Courante. This suite takes but four seconds longer than the version on Yo-Yo Ma’s second recording, but the playing seems more relaxed and welcoming.
Individual touches abound. In places where Bailey wishes to indicate the end of a phrase, he pauses occasionally as if participating in a courtly dance. In the Prelude to the Third Suite, he repeatedly sounds a resonant low note while playing an ever-developing set of arpeggios, all while flawlessly swelling and diminishing volume and keeping a firm hold on pitch. The Prelude to the final suite ends with impossibly fast strings of notes that he sounds more perfectly than many other cellists. His articulation remains formidable in the succeeding Courante.
Listen to the sighs and haunting sadness of the Fifth Suite’s burdened Sarabande. The first of the suite’s two Gavottes seems to defiantly declare, “We will endure and dance, no matter what.” That defiance seems rewarded in the final suite, which in Bailey’s hands begins with a song of victory.
Bailey’s two volumes are the first classical DSD-native, two-channel, “immersive audio” recordings from Octave Records, PS Audio’s record label. As with all Octave releases, PS Audio covers all expenses, gives musicians 25%–30% of every sale and distributes physical product and downloads only through its Octave Records website — no streaming. Bailey’s two volumes are available either as two Gold SACDs or in several
