Con Cembalo obbligato – Bach’s Gamba Sonatas

photo: Richard Dumas

You play a very wide-ranging repertoire on the viola da gamba. Where do the (few) gamba works by Bach stand in this spectrum?
Bach’s music is like a close (and rather demanding) friend whom you meet for the first time when very young and then get to know better and better as life goes on. From the musical point of view, Bach’s music is both a summary and a starting point for everything else in my repertoire, whether French, Italian, Renaissance or contemporary music. For that reason, it is always a key part of my artistic activity. Whenever I play the St John Passion or one of the gamba sonatas, I notice right away if I’m on form or not, and I learn something new from it every time.

Large parts of Bach’s three gamba sonatas were evidently not originally written for the gamba, but were rearrangements of earlier works. From your performer’s perspective, what do you feel about these three compositions?
Well, Bach gives little thought to the well-being of the performer, whether the piece was originally written for our instrument or not. So it’s more a question of forming his music in your head and then »managing«, i.e. trying to find how to get closer to his ideal on the instrument. That’s the opposite approach from playing works by Marais or Forqueray, where the instrument is the key to understanding the composition.

Bach presumably was not an active gamba player. For whom might he have compiled these three sonatas?
Bach always had a viola da gamba in his possession, though, and was probably capable of playing it ... But there are several people who might have inspired him to write these sonatas. For a long time, it was assumed they were for his good friend in Köthen, Christian Ferdinand Abel, or even their benefactor and gamba lover, Prince Leopold. But more recent research points more clearly to Carl Friedrich Abel, the son of Bach’s friend. The last hypothesis I know of is that they were for Ludwig Christian Hesse, an incredible virtuoso at the court of Frederick II, whom Bach visited in 1741 and 1747. 

On which instrument will you be playing the sonatas in Leipzig?
I don’t know yet, exactly. My seven-string Tielke gamba by François Bodart will be 20 years old next year and musically I grew up with it. Joachim Tielke was a contemporary of Bach, and the clarity of articulation of his gambas is ideal for communicating with the harpsichord. On the other hand, I recently bought a period instrument, probably from England, dating from the late 17th century. I’m gradually getting to know that gamba too and I admire its sound and resonance.