BACH CELLO SUITES
KHACHATUR KHACHATRYAN, Cello
The Chamber, The Arts House
Friday (20 October 2017)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 23 October 2017 with the title "Delving into details of Bach's Cello Suites".
This
has been a bumper year in Singapore for the unaccompanied string music of J.S.Bach. So soon
after Kam Ning and Loh Jun Hong's shared performance of all six Violin
Sonatas and Partitas at The Arts House, the same venue hosted young
Armenian cellist Khachatur Khachatryan in the six Cello Suites.
Composed
between 1717 and 1723 and conceived as didactic exercises, these were virtually
“lost” until Pablo Casals revitalised their performance in concert. Hearing all
six – 36 movements in all – at one sitting was a daunting prospect, but in
Khachatryan's hands and resourceful mind, the 160-minute-long concert proved an
unqualified triumph.
Playing
on a 1914 Pedrazzini cello that once belonged to his grandfather, Khachatryan
crafted a well-rounded and voluminous tone that spelled pure pleasure. Opening
with the familiar Prelude of Suite No.1 in G major, his handling
of its sequence of arpeggios showed he was no slave to the metronomic beat.
That the music was allowed to breathe naturally like a good singer suggested a
freedom from tempo strait-jacketing that was refreshing.
The
printed score merely acts as a blueprint, and beyond the notes Bach did not
leave directions or dynamic markings. Thus it was up to the performer to
determine how the music should unfold and flow. Khachatryan had an excellent
feel of its epic scope, yet was able to delve into finer details, such as including
or omitting repeats, adding accents, grace notes and trills as he saw fit.
Every
decision of his made sense, also translating into the sequence in which the
suites were performed. Instead of progressing by catalogue number, he followed
the relatively short and congenial Suite No.1 with the technically
demanding Suite No.4 in E flat major with its awkward octave leaps in
the opening Prelude. The contrasts were immediately felt, later
escalating to the big crunching chords in Suite No.5 in C minor, where
the deep sonority of tragedy loomed.
Most
of the movements were dances, and Khachatryan had the innate feel of pulse and
movement deeply etched in his musical psyche. From slower Allemandes to
pacier Courantes, the beat shifted accordingly, and in the paired dances
of the fifth movements (Minuets, Bourees and Gavottes),
there was sometimes a feel of jazzy improvisation that seemed improbable but
sounded totally idiomatic.
The
slow Sarabandes were the spiritual heart of the suites, and he luxuriated
in spacious vistas without showing too much reverence. The concluding Gigues
were rollicking affairs, and what could
possibly follow that of the valedictory Suite No.6 in D major?
Khachatryan received the vociferous
applause, and offered as an encore Sicilian cellist-composer Giovanni Sollima's
Lamentation, almost a summation of all the hi-jinks that had come
before.
Not
enough of Bach? Next month, violinist Tang Tee Khoon and British cellist Colin
Carr will relive the sonatas, partitas and suites - all 12 works - in two
concerts at the Esplanade Recital Studio.
