Cello Suites – Bach and Weinberg in Dialogue

photo: Simone Cecchetti

Sat, 13 June / 11.00 am / Lutherkirche / No 29 
Sun, 21 June / 11.00 am / Lutherkirche / No 203 
 

Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello are both standard literature and a huge challenge for all cellists. Can you tell us in a few words what fascinates you about the Suites? 
I feel that Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello are more than just a challenge. They’re much rather a fundamental language for every cellist, a language you have to internalise, understand and transform into your own thinking. Bach has gifted us a natural element made up of notes, rules and proportions; it’s our duty to integrate this beauty into the mystery of art. 

In your concerts at the 2026 Bachfest, you will juxtapose each of Bach’s Cello Suites with a solo sonata by Mieczysław Weinberg. What combines the two composers?
I like to describe the Bach/Weinberg combination as »the right distance«. Almost 300 years separate these works, yet they seem as if they were a part of one single project – a joint desire to lend the cello expressive power and autonomy. The clever use of polyphony using just four strings is the clearest sign of that.

Weinberg composed his four Sonatas for Solo Cello between 1960 and 1986, in other words over a long period of time. What stylistic changes can we see?
The four sonatas differ greatly from one another, quite independently of the timespan. But over the cycle as a whole, I see the clear presence of theatricality in Weinberg’s music, a theatricality that serves as a structure – just as in Bach’s suites, the structure is determined by the dance, or what in instrumental music is left of the dance forms. In the First Sonata, there are strong notes of Jewish and folk tradition, whereas in the Fourth Sonata a distance echo of twelve-tone music and melodies reminiscent of Mahler replace the folk elements which still crop up here and there in the two middle sonatas.