Review
Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello
J. S. Bach
Saturday, January 14 , 2005
The Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich has called J. S. Bach's Sixth Suite for Cello in D Major "a symphony for cello, a "tall order for an instrument that is essentially unpolyphonic." How do you make four strings reveal harmonic complexity and a clear top line simultaneously without muddying matters?
Tanya Prochazka faced that challenge bravely Saturday evening in the
second
of two concerts devoted to 
Bach's cycle of six cello suites. Playing in a darkened Convocation Hall [University of Alberta], with just a spotlight and unreliable candle power, Prochazka revealed both the richness and variety of Bach's exploration of an instrument that was primarily a servant of continuo contingents in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
She also showed how powerful and human live musical performance can be. On the program Saturday were Suites Nos. 1, 5 and 6. For the first, Prochazka played a cello with its end pin retracted and a baroque-style bow, largely without vibrato. The nod to early music practice produced a performance that captured the lighter qualities of Bach's examination of the instrument's possibilities within the whole cycle.
Even double-stopping benefited from the lighter touch. Sometimes, the effort to create chordal effects on the cello can come across as abrasive rather than harmonious, to my ear. The Sarabande in No. 1 had an elegance and an aloofness that is almost the touchstone quality of the instrument itself, regardless of the repertoire.
For the Nos. 5 and 6, Prochazka used a cello dating from 1710, and its much darker tone, especially in the bass, dominated the flavour of the performance of the last two suites. The Sarabande of Suite No. 5 in C Major wasn't as seamless as I've heard it played; a matter of taste, obviously, and the tempo she took for the second Gavotte was verging on reckless. Rather than building excitement from the slower more, textured Gavotte I, the result was light fingered but also musically lighter weight. A similar, but less frenetic approach to the Courante in No. 6 worked much better. She took full advantage of the frisky melodic material of No. 5's Gigue, which had both a liveliness and a terrific sense of line about it.
Suite No. 6 is written in D Major, which musicologists often refer to as the sunniest of keys, the one Beethoven concludes his Symphony No. 9 in, for instance. Suite No. 6 may be in bright D Major, but it also offers some of the most dense harmonic textures of any of the suites. The Allemande, for instance, is far darker and evocative of the cello's natural solitary disposition than any of the other Allemandes in the cycle, with the exception of No. 5. Prochazka found much of improvisatory-sounding, harsher elements of the suite's harmonic relations in No. 6, leading to an interpretation that fell more on the side of spirited aggression than joie de vivre.
Throughout the evening, Prochazka proved nimble in a few tight corners, finding solutions to particularly sticky passages that maintained the musical integrity of the moment. Purists might have been distressed, but the final impression was of an artist placing her cairn on the long road every serious cellist is on, where Bach's great accomplishment is brought to life anew in the live performance, where all the risks and sublime revelations await. Few of us will come to that path except as listeners.
Bill Rankin
Edmonton Journal Culture Writer