Joyce Hatto Piano Fraud, Wrapped Up Nicely by The New Yorker

It’s been out for the better part of the month, so this post is hardly news. But only yesterday did I get around to reading and hearing Mark Singer’s excellent article and podcast on the Joyce Hatto piano fraud.

This coverage is one-stop shopping on one of the summer’s best stories. Let’s sum it up:

1. Joyce Hatto enjoys minor piano career but stops performing in the 70s.
2. Her husband, a record producer, begins releasing “her” catalog of recordings, representing an astounding breadth of repertoire and a fevered pace of productivity despite Hatto being unable to perform in public due to cancer.
3. Classical internet community falls in love with recordings and spunky narrative. Joyce Hatto is the best pianist you’ve never heard of! Why, it almost sounds as if she becomes a different pianist when she plays different pieces!
4. Not too many people inquire too deeply into the recordings, or the names of the gifted-but-unknown conductors, or the impressive orchestras they lead in the Hatto piano concerto recordings. Mainstream music critics write gushing reviews.
5. One day a listener slides a “Hatto” CD into iTunes and is puzzled when another musician’s name appears. A reluctant analysis ensues on sites like Musicweb.
6. Music theorist Nicholas Cook and colleagues prove, through data visualization techniques, that Hatto’s recordings are technically identical other performers’ releases.
7. Collectors, working collaboratively across the internet, begin to identify true performers.

The discovery of the fraud has, in turn, led to an even more lively discussion on technical and artistic points:

• Why did the discovery have to be made through technical serendipity? Why hadn’t more people recognized the original recordings?
• How much do context and backstory add to the enjoyment of art? Singer indirectly alludes to the idea of “Joyce Hatto’s Career” as a work of art in itself when he asks “did it make her happy?” Ms. Hatto died over a year ago, before the truth came out, and her health status prior to her death is not public information. We are left to speculate on just what she knew or condoned.
• Can this be considered performance art, as has been suggested in the case of J.T. Leroy, the hot novelist with the courageous backstory. Though there’s a compelling difference between the Hatto fraud and the Leroy fraud. Laura Albert wrote her own stuff — she just lied about who “she” was.

Update on 2013-06-19 20:18 by John Gibbons

Originally posted  Oct 5, 2007. Republished for the entertainment of “The Great Pianists” class.

Classical Beach Reading: Robert Levine's "Weep, Shudder, Die"

If there is one quote from Weep, Shudder, Die: A Guide to Loving Opera that sums up Robert Levine’s case for opera as popular entertainment it’s this:

Opera is all around us — hundreds of hours’ worth on YouTube alone — and there is no excuse not to take part in it. Much like the dozen or so theaters in eighteenth-centure Venice (and then all over Europe), opera has again become familiar, popular entertainment, and it has unleashed its weird power. It still requires some commitment to knowledge and it rarely has a beat, but there’s just so much of Lady Gaga a human being can enjoy/tolerate without needing to be touched in a slightly deeper place.

The aim of this book is to get people to try opera by pointing out how available it is today (with the Met’s HD broadcasts, Opera in Cinema, DVD/Blu-Rays in the hundreds) and by demonstrating opera’s similarities as well as differences to more widely accessible genres. This comes with a little mythbusting in the bit where he anticipates and shoots down some common “Philistine” objections like the unnatural sound produced by operatic technique. Nobody objects to Gospel singers taking their voices as high as they’ll go because we recognize religious ecstasy as a justification for all that intensity. Stipulate that opera functions on a similar level of heightened discourse and its “inauthenticity” stops being a distraction. It becomes the entire point. Levine wants people to fall in love with the trained, unamplified human voice.

Another goal is to make it easier to get into opera. In chapters devoted to the top national traditions in opera, Levine covers the greatest hits with brief composer bios and historical/stylistic background, then homes in on selected facts the newbie might find most helpful and entertaining. The tone is quite chatty and there’s a liberal helping backstage gossip. Excellent beach reading.

Levine introduces his book at the Wall Street Journal: Why Opera Isn’t Just For Divas.

If You Think You Hate Charles Ives On His Birthday

Not that I’m referring to anyone in particular who might have mourned the anniversary of Ive’s birth today on social media. But if you don’t do quarter-tones and all those other “intellectual” aspects of Ive’s instrumental music, there could be hours of pleasure in store for you in his deceptively simple songs.

I’m sitting in a search marketing conference right now, so I can’t say much. But the songs are catchy, melodic and walk a tightrope between the satirical and the sentimental.

Preview - Charles Ives: Songs by Jan DeGaetani and Gilbert Kalish - Rhapsody lets you listen to 20 full tracks per months without joining or paying. This wonderful album is a worthy use of those freebies.

For a totally free Ives song session, here is a wonderful playlist where you can listen to some of the songs and watch a scrolling score. The singing on this playlist is not always ideal (Ives songs are a student recital staple) but it’s a convenient way to get familiar with these songs.

“The Circus Band” is a favorite. I like it better as a song (and PLEEZ, pianists, DO shout “Hear the trombones” at the appointed time - really) but some prefer this totally raucus orchestra/chorus arrangement by Ives, performed here by a school group under the helm of Michael Tippett:

A Final Reckoning: Viktor Ullmann's Last Piece

January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops. Representing the many victims, especially the doomed artists of Theresienstadt, we’re listening to the Seventh Piano Sonata of Viktor Ullmann. Under the Nazi regime, Ullmann was first silenced as a “degenerate” composer owing to his Jewish ancestry, then deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto/transit camp in September 1942. After contributing to the camp’s poignantly rich artistic life for two years — and composing most of the pieces of his which survive today — he was deported to Auschwitz in mid-October 1944 along with members of his family and many colleagues such as Hans Krasa (composer of the opera Brundibar), Pavel Haas, and Gideon Klein. He’s believed to have been gassed on October 18, 1944.

Here are the Variations and Fugue from Ullmann’s last work, his 7th Piano Sonata. The fugue is on Yehuda Sharret’s Song of Rachel, a popular Zionist anthem. It’s dedicated to Ullmann’s three eldest children and dated August 22, 1944. His youngest son, Pavel, had died in the camp at the age of three and son Max would die in Auschwitz at twelve.  Felice and Jean (Johannes) were safe in the England.

As was Ullmann’s habit, this movement is full of other musical quotations, the most audible of which may be “Now Thank We All Our God.”

The seventh sonata is also the short score for a planned Second Symphony, eventually realized by Bernhard Wulff. (Look for the CD and DVD conducted by James Conlon.) Reviewing a performance of the orchestral version, James Reid Baxter offers this chilling description:

Wulff described the final Variations and Fugue on a Hebrew Folksong as a ‘final reckoning with European culture, which allowed things like Terezin to happen’. It is simply the most disturbing music I have ever heard. The little melody is lightly varied several times, then subjected to vehement, superb fugal treatment which sets alarms ringing — the possible symbolism of which is stomach-turning. The horror grows as ‘Now Thank We All Our God’is sonorously declaimed by the brass over a furious counterpoint, which builds to a general pause. Then a single, derisory blare of ‘B-A-C-H’ is heard on trombine, and the father of German music is dismissed in a ferocious stretto using the Hebrew melody, which concludes the Symphony with heartbreaking energy, singing in the face of deliberate murder of so many millions of futures. The sheer strength required to write, in those circumstances, silences all criticism. Never has the idea of ‘music as music’ seemed so small: as Wulff wrote, this is not ‘engaged composition, this is music as the will to survive.

Ullmann kept a diary in Theresienstadt in which he addressed the idea of singing in the face of… (words fail).

I have composed quite a lot of new music here in Theresienstadt, mostly at the request of pianists, singers and conductors for the purpose of the Ghetto’s recreation periods. It would be as irksome to count them, as it would be to remark on the fact that in Theresienstadt, it would be impossible to play a piano if there was none available. In addition, future generations will care little for the lack of music paper that we presently experience. I emphasise only the fact that in my musical work at Theresienstadt, I have bloomed in musical growth and not felt myself at all inhibited: we simply did not sit and lament on the shores of the rivers of Babylon that our will for culture was not sufficient to our will to exist. And I am convinced that all who have worked in life and art to wrestle content into its unyielding form will say that I was right…”

Met “Tosca” Booed: Luc Bondy vs. Franco Zeffirelli

“He’s not second rate. He’s third rate.”
 – Franco Zeffirelli in anticipation of Luc Bondy’s new Tosca at the Met.

“I’m a third-rate director, and he is a second assistant of Visconti.”
– Luc Bondy, on Franco Zeffirelli, following the opening night boos of his Tosca.

The New York Times summarizes a defense of the production by the Met’s Peter Gelb and Bondy’s spirited comeback to Zeffirelli.

I think it’s fair to disclose that we here at the palatial world headquarters of Holde Kunst are basically in favor of Regietheater (aka Eurotrash, aka Director’s theater) because it’s better than being afraid to try new things for fear of upsetting the old guard. On the other hand, we find ourselves dismayed at the majority of particular examples of Regietheater that we’ve encountered.  I probably missed some nuances in Diane Paulus’s Don Giovanni at Chicago Opera Theater because I kept getting distracted by the “exclusive night club’s” recognizable KLIPPAN sofas from IKEA.  I’ve seen the Nurse in Romeo et Juliette sung,  apparently, by Mary Todd Lincoln. And I can’t tell you how alarmed I was when I first saw this picture from the current Bayreuth production of Parsifal – and how (relatively) relieved I was to find that this hospital ward wasn’t actually the church of the grail and the guy in fishnet stockings was at least Klingsor and not Amfortas or Gurenamnz.

In this case, Bondy’s vision is replacing a beloved, traditional production by Franco Zeffirelli, who took an opportunity to pre-emptively trash the production:.

“I have not seen yet any Puccini operas successfully adapted to this idiotic new way to approach his music,” he said. “You have to follow Puccini’s precise instructions.” Bringing interpretations to the staging of “Tosca” is especially tricky given that it is set in highly identifiable places in Rome, where any tourist can go. (Franco Zeffirelli, on Luc Bondy’s production of Tosca)

This wasn’t exactly sporting of “F-Zeff,” but his thesis matches one that John has advanced in this pages: Puccini’s original settings are too much fun to sacrifice on the altar of Regietheater. That’s why Puccini seems rarely subjected to directorial intrusion, and perhaps why messing with Tosca at the expense of the Zeffirelli production seems a particular affront to some members of the audience.  Add the fact that this opening was the season’s Gala (with an audience self-selected for perhaps a greater conservative tendency) and we have ourselves a big, fat “Boooooo…”

So what’s so bad about the new Tosca? You can see for yourself at your local theater on October  10. Here’s what I’ve heard:

• Tosca stabs Scarpia in a more sensitive anatomical area than is customary.
• Instead of laying out Scarpia’s body respectfully with candles and and a cross, she fans herself on the sofa.
• Prostitutes are seen earlier in the action — on said sofa as well as crawling around on all fours.
• Cavaradossi paints a topless Mary Magdalene, which Tosca slashes with a knife.
• Scarpia writhes against a similarly nonvirginal statue of the Virgin Mary.
• Tosca’s suicidal leap is depicted by a body double hanging from a string as the curtain falls.

Here is a non-snarky negative review from NJ.com.

Opera Chic offers a contrarian view, declaring that “Only in New York City would an essentially conventional, prudent opera director such as Luc Bondy be considered some sort of insane, incendiary bomb-thrower…” – part of a detailed treatment of the production covering several blog posts.  

But the prize goes to this Edith Wharton take on Monday night’s opening. It’s a spot-on rewrite of the opening scene in The Age of Innocence…

Today’s post is by Bonnie Gibbons.

Live in HD Series 2009-10 Schedule

• Tosca by Giacomo Puccini — October 10, 2009
• Aida by Giuseppe Verdi — October 24, 2009
• Turandot by Giacomo Puccini — November 7, 2009
• Les Contes d’Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach — December 19, 2009
• Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss — January 9, 2010
• Carmen by Georges Bizet — January 16, 2010
• Simon Boccanegra by Giuseppe Verdi — February 6, 2010
• Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas — March 27, 2010
• Armida by Gioachino Rossini — May 1, 2010

A Belated "Leb Wohl" to Hildegard Behrens

During our vacation in Spain, the dramatic soprano Hildegard Behrens died unexpectedly from an aortic aneurysm.

Behrens wasn’t merely one of the most fearless-yet-expressive Brunnhildes — you’ll  find links to  her other roles below. But she’ll always be the “home” Brunnhilde for me.  I was in the upper reaches of the Met audience on the opening night of the Otto Schenck Goetterdammerung in 1989. In a typical “youth is wasted on the young” scenario, I had no idea at the time how fortunate I was (the cast also featured Matti Salminen at his frightening finest and Christa Ludwig in one of her last Waltrautes). I was a music major in my last year of college, but hadn’t gotten around to Wagner yet. (I was buried in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, racing to complete my senior thesis on that work somewhere near on time.) I had only listened once to the just-out-on-CD Solti Ring with some other students in preparation for the college trip that landed me in the audience that night. The friend sitting next to me (also a Wanger newbit) commented approvingly “Brunnhilde is being sung by a lady named Hildegard — that’s promising.”

This was a few years before the Met finally caved to supertitles, so that single preparatory hearing was my only guide. It was up to Hildegard Behrens to communicate the range of human experience Brunnhilde encompasses in those three heartbreaking acts. I’ve seen and heard Brunnhildes who are better, in various moments and in various ways, but the moral authority and raw vulnerability of Behrens remains unmatched for me. In Act Two I was “lost” in terms of the libretto, but riveted on her presence in the middle of the stage. It’s not just her visuals, either — it’s there on the Levine recording on DG, where the vocally friendlier studio conditions highlight her expressive phrasing and (yes, I’m saying it) beautiful, sometimes radiant voice. (Note to the Hildegard hatas: just how hoarse would YOU be at the end of a four-night Ring?)

Germaine Greer says it better:

There is no chance that I will see a Brünnhilde so utterly destroyed, so uncompromisingly tragic ever again. I would have thought it impossible to show such a depth of devastation and helplessness in music, but Behrens did it. How she did it – whether by her utter absorption, her rapt earnestness or her lack of self-consciousness – I shall never know. Never to have seen her do it would be never to have understood how a preposterous musical drama, with absurdly affected DIY verse for a libretto, could be transmuted into the highest of high art.

Behrens is well represented on YouTube as Tosca, Isolde, Fidelio, Elektra (and Elettra), Elisabeth (Tannhauser), the Kaiserin (from Frau), etc.

The Met has a photo gallery tribute. But let’s give the last word to James Morris’s Wotan. This clip begins as Brunnhilde is silenced forever — at least to the ears of this “unhappy immortal.”

Today’s post is by Bonnie Gibbons.

Obama Inauguration Music & Symbolism, Part 2

This post was supposed to be a discussion of the John Williams Inauguration composition Air and Simple Gifts. But the piece itself just wasn’t that interesting! So how about some brief comments and links, and have some more Marian Anderson?

The piece (see video below) consisted of an air that felt primarily soothing, rather like a sunbeam that comes through the window warms part of your carpet on an otherwise chilly day. The “Simple Gifts” portion was an obvious nod to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which is perhaps the quintessential American classical composition. So quintessential, probably, that it’s unnecessary to point out that Anthony McGill’s gorgeously played clarinet entrance on the “Simple Gifts” melody is a verbatim quote from the Copland version. (Listen to that on YouTube, with some Ansel Adams photographs.)

Here’s the video from the Inauguration:

Alex Ross gathers some reviews, and offers some hopes for what an Obama administration might do for classical music and the arts. He also links to a brief video of Obama narrating Copland’s Lincoln Portait.

By now the “scandal” has broken that the musicians, due to the cold temperature, were marking along to a recording they’d made — the instrumental equivalent of lip-synching. There have been a few “Milli Vanilli” quips, but it’s not like they hired, well, better musicians to do the playing behind the scenes. My favorites were the attempts to tie this “scandal” to the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, where the “cuter” girl lip-synched for the girl with the better voice. Whether they could have found “cuter musicians” than Ma, Perlman, McGill and Gabriela Montero is pretty subjective, but believe me when I say the use of a prerecording was the right call. Musical instruments are made of wood, metal, fabric and glue. Know what happens to those materials in cold weather? They contract. Strings, inparticular, get brittle. The brass band hit several clunkers in those fanfares they played as people were walked in.

So, let’s get back to Marian Anderson and why she was such a big deal. Some of my favorite clips:

Handel’s “He Shall Feed His Flock” in a very slow performance that would certainly never be allowed in today’s era of “early music authenticity.”

Schubert’s “Erlkoenig” — listen to how successfuly Marian differentiates the voices.

“Sometimes I fee Like a Motherless Child”

For those reading this on a feed - this is Bonnie Gibbons talking, not John. It’s come to my attention that author names aren’t being included on the feed, which I’ll try to get fixed. Generally, if the post discusses a piece of music in detail it’s John, because that’s what he does for a living. With a day job in web site development, I’m generally the one with the digital music industry news, or the “around the web” stuff. Due to my respect for this day job, I rarely have an opportunity to discuss music in detail, and never did get the chops to, say, discuss the music of George Perle, who passed last week.

Obama Inauguration Music and Symbolism, Part 1

View at Britannica.comWhatever your political persuasion in the 2008 election, it’s beyond dispute that the inauguration of an American president of African descent is historic. Given that Obama has lived so long in, and represented, the Land of Lincoln, it was inevitable that he’d tap into the Lincoln mythology with gestures such as his train trip into DC and his taking of the oath of office using the same bible that Lincoln used in 1861.

A piece of symbolism missed by the TV commentators, not to mention me at the time, was the backstory of Aretha Franklin’s performance of “My Country Tis of Thee.” As a lover of true contralto voices and a history buff, I’m a little sheepish that it took a belated visit to The Rest is Noise to remind me that Marian Anderson sang the same song on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. Anderson, an internationally successful opera singer, had been denied permission to perform to an integrated audience in venues owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution and a local white public school.

These YouTube video show Anderson’s performance along with Franklin’s. The Anderson performance includes an introductory speech by Harold Ickes, who had authorized the performance in his capacity as Secretary of the Interior.

Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been referencing Anderson’s performance in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

At least one TV commentator quoted this excerpt as Aretha stepped up to the podium Tuesday, but in none of the network videos I’ve seen did they mention Marian Anderson at that moment.

Anderson was celebrated by by Queen Latifah (paying homage through words and a similar style of fur coat) at Sunday’s Lincoln Memorial concert. But not during the inauguration TV coverage in conjunction with Franklin’s performance of the same song, seven decades later, in such vastly different circumstances.

Part 2 of this post will discuss the John Williams chamber piece premiered at the ceremony.

Bach's Financial Crisis Soundtrack

I just had to share this little gem from The Guardian, in which Paul Lay reviews Bach’s Cantata No. 168 as a commentary on today’s financial crisis. This cantata chastises the unjust steward from Corinthians and the Gospel of Luke, with a nod to what Lay refers to as “the monied men of 1720s Weimar.” (Bach students will recall that the great prestige of Bach’s position at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche was due to that cities position as a trade power of the era, and that grumbling business correspondence is considered overrepresented in Bach’s surviving letters.)

Some text highlights include “Thine Accounting! Judgement Day!” (Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort!), and “”Capital and interest must one day be settled” (in which the tenor soloist worries about… accounting errors?)

Lay concludes:

Quite what the the economic situation was in Weimar at the time I cannot say, but after listening to Bach’s Cantata 168, we can conclude that the God-fearing Lutherans of the day shared Mervyn King’s concern with moral hazard, took a realistic view of the business cycle, and whether they liked it or not were unlikely to be fed escapist rubbish by the musical genius in their midst.

Enjoy this YouTube clip, or purchase a copy as a gift for that special financial whiz in your life.

Bach: Cantatas, BWV 94, 105, 168

Deutsche Grammophon

J.S. Bach: Cantatas, Vol. 15

by Ton Koopman, Deborah York, Sandrine Piau, Christoph Pregardien, Paul Agnew, Klaus Mertens, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir

Blogs Are Abuzz for Anna Magdalena Bach - Did She Compose the Cello Suites?

Close-up of title page to the first volume of Singende Müse an der Pleisse, a collection of strophic songs published in Leipzig in 1736, by “Sperontes”, Johann Sigismund Scholze. JS and Anna Magdalena Bach may be the couple pictured.Martin Jarvis decided, as a 19-year-old violist, that the famed cello suites didn’t sound like J.S. Bach.

“Certainly in the first suite, the movements are short and very simple, in comparison with the first movement of the violin works. And I couldn’t understand why,” he said. 

After years of forensic study, the conductor and professor at Darwin University finally discovered this alleged slam-dunk: a manuscript with the notation “Ecrite par Madame Bachen Son Epouse” which says “written by the wife of Bach” rather than “copied.”

We already knew of Anna Magdalena’s role as a copyist. Obviously neither that word, nor the recognizable handwriting of Anna Magdalena would cut it as proof given her known role as a copyist — but in news reports Dr. Jarvis mentions “18 reasons why they weren’t written by Bach.” (Specifics would be great.)

There are several mentions on blogs, but none provides additional detail or (yet) a good discussion beyond what’s in the most detailed

Reuters article

. Over at the

Museum of Hoaxes

, there’s a little more detail, with a mention of “a musicologist from Sweden who has used statistics to conclude the cello suites did not fit into Bach’s other works.”

The Telegraph

did find a Belfast Bach Scholar who described the findings as “highly important.” Unfortunately they also have some skeptical quotes from academic Stephen Rose and cellists Julian Lloyd Webber and Steven Isserlis:

Stephen Rose, a lecturer in music at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “It is plausible that she corrected, refined and revised many of his compositions, although there is not enough evidence to show that she single-handedly composed the Cello Suites.”

Cellists who have performed the Suites extensively remained skeptical. Julian Lloyd Webber insisted that the compositions were “stylistically totally Bach” and that “many composers had appalling handwriting, which meant better copies would naturally have been made, with the originals then discarded”.

Steven Isserlis, the cellist, who is working on a recording of the Suites, said: “We can’t say that it is definitely not true, in the same way that we can’t prove that Anne Hathaway did not write some of Shakespeare’s work, but I don’t believe this to be a serious theory.”

Given that Anna Magdalena did serve as a copyist, it’s hard to imagine how a physical analysis of the manuscripts could prove her authorship — unless you could somehow place an original manuscript in a time and place where it literally couldn’t have been the work of Johann Sebastian. What’s really needed is a consensus among at least some Bach experts who are in a position to address whether the compositional technique and style of the suites might indicate Anna Magdalena’s role. Dr. Jarvis will be speaking at the New Zealand Forensic Science Society — not a peer-reviewed musical conference. (I could be misinterpreting the term

forensic study

here. Given that the details aren’t obviously accessible on the web, it could be what historians call manuscript studies — or it could branch out into some kind of scientific analysis of the musical choices reflected in the scores. The point is that no specific finding reported in the media comes close to justifying Dr. Jarvis’s thesis.)

According to his faculty profile, Dr. Jarvis presented on this topic at the 2002 Musicological Society Conference - Newcastle. His publications include:

• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 2 The Musical Analysis” Stringendo Australia 2003

• “Did Johann Sebastian Write the Cello Suites?” Musical Opinion, UK, 2002

• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 1” Stringendo, Australia, 2002

• “The Significance of Anna Magdalena Bach”, Musical Opinion July/Aug 2005

I haven’t been involved in musical academe for many years and am not in a position to determine how peer-reviewed these publications are, so my apologies in advance if I’m wrong. But Musical Opinion, at least, is a classical music magazine. Stringendo seems to be the newsletter of the Australian Strings Association.  Sadly, it’s not online so we can’t assess the 2003 musical analysis.

Perhaps the last doubt-casting word comes from Jarvis himself:

“It doesn’t sound musically mature. It sounds like an exercise, and you have to work incredibly hard to make it sound like a piece of music,” he said.

Yes, the suites are hard. I never really mastered the last three as an advanced (but not performing-career-bound) college-level cellist.  And while the first three lie beautifully under the fingers in the congenial keys of G major, D minor and C major, it’s challenging to do them justice.

But the reasons have nothing to do with musical flaws. The cellist plays alone and must manage the pacing and large-scale momentum independently. Pianists are accustomed to this, but the unaccompanied cello repertoire is quite small — and many student cellists face this challenge in these pieces alone. An even bigger challenge is bringing out the contrapuntal underpinnings of the music while playing a single line. My teachers spent countless hours explaining how and why to “bring out the base line” etc. and only after learning music theory did I truly understand.

Enjoy these free YouTube performances and decide for yourself. And a hat-tip to Dan Perry for bringing this story to my attention.

• Pablo Casals - Suite #1, Sarabande

• Mischa Maisky - Suite #2, Prelude

• Mstlav Rostropovich - Suite #3, Prelude

• Sifei Wen - Suite #4, Prelude

• Diemerson Sena - Suite #5, Prelude

• Mstislav Rostropovich - Suite 6, Gavotte & Gigue