Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
The Cello Suites
Filipe Quaresma (cello)
rec. 2022, Mosteiro de S. Bento da Vitória, Porto, Portugal
Artway Records 12023 [2 CDs: 139]

The Cello Suites
Pablo de Naverán (cello)
rec. 2021, Église de Perroy, Switzerland
Claves 3062 [3 CDs: 166]

In September this year I favourably reviewed Sæunn Thorsteindóttir’s recording of Bach’s cello suites. I have now two more accounts to assess, both Iberian in origin, one by Pablo de Naverán from Spain and the other by Filipe Quaresma from Portugal. They show that just as the Goldberg Variations continue to attract new generations of performers, the cello suites exercise a similar fascination. Only this year, four recordings of them have been reviewed on MusicWeb and dozens of reviews of them have appeared since the inception of the website nearly thirty years ago. Several of them are mine, including that of David Watkins’ recording on a period instrument (review), those by Nina Kotova (review) and Alicia Weilerstein (review), and one of my earliest reviews, Pablo Casals’s pioneering version (review).

I already have a dozen sets of this music on my shelves. For practical reasons, I listened to both sets in tandem and have departed from MusicWeb’s usual practice of reviewing recordings discretely, having obtained a special dispensation to review them jointly. Given that we already have so many wonderful accounts of these seminal works, ranging from the austere to the voluptuously Romantic, on both modern and period instruments, any new recording is up against it.

Both cellists take repeats but the first observation is that while Quaresma’s recording is conventional – if slightly on the fast side and the same overall as Kotova – Naverán’s is decidedly slow, similar to Weilerstein. However, I have not found the speed at which these suites are played to be a very reliable indicator of artistic merit. Both are clearly master cellists. I am very impressed by the sound quality of both recordings, although Quaresma is closer and fiercer and Naverán has much more air and reverberance around his instrument. His manner, too, is much dreamier and more leisurely; listening first to just the 2:50 of the former’s Prelude in No. 1, versus 3:11 of the latter, confirms those marked differences. Let me also mention what might seem a rather petty and even crass objection, but I find Naverán’s intermittent heavy breathing and sniffing a distraction compared with the silent Quaresma, despite Quaresma’s closer miking. I know; guitarists have fingernails which click and cellists must breathe, but at times – the Sarabande in No. 1, being the first instance of this problem – the sniffing here is distinctly intrusive.

As I progressed through these two recordings, my own preference became clearer. I find myself less involved by Naverán’s more detached and patrician manner. I also feel that for Naverán I am in a row of the concert hall set well back but for Quaresma I am perched in the front seats and even leaning forward. Recordings and concerts are necessarily different experiences but I like the former to approximate the best vantage point of the latter as much as possible. I find Quaresma to be more animated in the lively Courantes and Naverán rhythmically less subtle. Naverán’s slow intensity better suits the more tragic movements, such as the Prelude to No 2, but Quaresma is the more varied and flexible artist. He is equally adept there in generating dark melancholy – and I love his deployment of metallic arpeggios concluding that Prelude.

If I am referring more frequently to the Preludes in each suite, it is because they act as reliable indices to the mood of the suite as a whole and the brilliance of the opening to No. 3 is a good illustration of that; rendered as they are by each respective cellist here, they sound very different. Naverán’s tone is smooth, plush and rounded, his manner stately; Quaresma’s is much edgier and more urgent, and I find that more engaging – although the frequent knocking of his bow against the body of his instrument is rather startling. Likewise, he gives the discords of the weird, demonic, concluding Gigue a bit more bite and momentum than the slightly more restrained Naverán.

The two cellists play the mysterious Sarabande of No. 4 quite differently, too. Naverán is slower and sadder, and uses more legato, rounding off the corners; Quaresma is more pained and resolutely dynamic, and any preference will be very subjective – mine is for Quaresma’s as more interesting. Exactly the same contrast applies to their respective treatments of the two Bourrées which follow. Naverán smooths them over and as a result his sniffing and panting are all the more audible, too. Quaresma plays them considerably faster – but not as fast as the wrong timing on the back of the CD envelope indicates; it is not 3:56 but 5:05.

Suite 5 is in many ways the deepest and darkest of the set. As the timings all along indicate, Quaresma is more driven, especially in the Allemande; Naverán evokes a deeper, more timeless, almost suspended, melancholy. This is perhaps one of the rarer instances where I prefer his interpretative stance; indeed, a case can be made that he embraces more fully the intense sadness of the music in this suite.

After such dolour, the sunlit uplands of No. 6 are all the more welcome. Again Naverán takes the Allemande much more slowly than Quaresma; to be frank, I find them a little halting and leaden. The difference between them is again not as great as the Artway CD cover timing would have it, as it is once more wrong. The declared timing of the Allemande is in fact short by a minute, and the famous Gavottes by two. Careless production proofing.

The packaging of the Artway set is… well, arty, eclectic – and frankly irritating. The oversized cardboard slipcase does not fit on regular CD shelves, containing the discs in cardboard sleeves and nine square, loose-leaved note-sheets.* Equally annoyingly for the reviewer, there are no overall timings for each CD, so I have had to painstakingly add it up. The Claves set is in a tripartite, cardboard, gatefold package with plastic inserts to hold the three CDs – two suites on each disc, obviously, something of an extravagance. This results in a current purchase price of £32, shipped free, from the Claves website, and rather more from Presto and other outlets. The Artway issue, somewhat cheaper, is available direct from their website for €28.90 including shipping but may be streamed for much less. It is also clearly preferable, both aesthetically and sonically. However, alternative recordings of superior quality are available much more cheaply. Given the weight of competition available, I would not necessarily recommend Quaresma over the best recent versions linked in my opening paragraph.

Ralph Moore

* The inconveniences and pitfalls of such a format – loose leaves flapping about – are illustrated by the fact that my set had a duplicate sheet for Suite 5. I also found myself continually shuffling and dropping pages when consulting the notes; give me a booklet any day.

Filipe Quaresma on Artway Records

Pablo de Naverán on Claves

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