Dip Your Ears, No. 25

Available from Amazon: J. S. Bach, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, Pierre Fournier

Among all the accounts of Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, this 1961 recording still stands out as the one by which to measure all others. Fournier does not play in a historically informed style—he is too grave and sometimes too slow for that—but the tension, the emotion, and the character with which he imbues these works make them eminently exciting. You are gripped from the first notes on, and you will want to listen all the way through to Suite No. 6. Particularly delightful, perhaps due to his predispositions to all things French, is every Allemande he puts his bow to. There is Wispelwey on Channel Classics for a riveting "authentic" performance, there is Maisky (his later DG recording) for idiosyncratic Romanticism, and Rostropovich for breakneck speeds (if unfortunately boring) on EMI, but Fournier is the one to come back to.