The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by J. S. Bach (1685-1750) loom larger than any other works in the genre. They are the veritable Alpha and Omega of a cellist’s art. In these suites, technical challenges are not so overwhelming as to deter a budding professional. Yet once those hurdles are overcome, infinite decisions regarding tempo, articulation, ornamentation, and phrasing keep even a master musician engaged for life. Essentially without direct precedent, Bach crafted a body of solo cello music that forever defined the genre and brought the Baroque cello on par with its more popular cousin, the viola da gamba. Compared to the viola da gamba, the cello was a newcomer with no substantial body of existing works. This newness may have been attractive to Bach, offering something akin to a blank canvas.

Just as classical rhetoric teaches orators to begin with their strongest argument, Bach launches Suite No. 1 – and thus the entire collection – with a superlative Prélude, both elegant and rapturous. The famous arpeggiated theme undulates hypnotically in and around G major until an arresting chromatic progression (C-sharp to C-natural in the bass) initiates a prolonged cadenza. During the ensuing Allemande, Bach’s sinuous lines almost imperceptibly connect melodic peaks with supporting bass notes, creating hints of polyphony between two different voices. This technique, called compound melody, takes advantage of an effect similar to Gestalt psychology. We parse pitches of alternating high and low register into distinct strands, creating the mental impression of two separate melodies; our brain fills in the gaps to create the impression of linear continuity where none exists.

The Courante offers a study in economy of means and fullness of expression. Our ears are drawn to the folk-like charm of the dance, which steps forward with a balance between heavy initial beats and a more lithe continuation. In the Sarabande Bach recalls the Prélude’s opening chord progression, setting out an arching B-C-B figure over pedal tone on G. Yet the effect is deeply altered here by sonorous triple-stop chords and slow tempo. Before the final Gigue, Bach inserts two Minuets. The first paints a picture of the emerging stil galant and is all clarity and verve; the second, based on the iconic lament bass progression, is more harmonically adventurous. Both are swept aside by an exhilarating Gigue noteworthy for its structural clarity, rhythmic interest, and carefully placed dramatic twists that enliven things just before they become predictable.

Bach’s suites were published posthumously in 1825 and then largely forgotten. Indeed, their survival into the 21st century may largely hang on one very fortuitous shopping trip. As the story goes, in 1889 young Pablo Casals (1876-1973) – already adept at multiple instruments – was gifted a cello by his father. Later that same day, Casals unearthed a dusty musical score while perusing a Barcelona thrift store. Though it sounds almost too dramatic to be true, that dusty score contained six suites for solo cello by Bach, works unknown to young Casals and almost everyone alive at the time. Their difficulty and beauty inspired him to a decade of almost slavish devotion to master the cello. Finally, in 1901 Casals began performing these cello suites in concert – very likely the first time they were heard in public since the 1720s.

While we know Casals as a perfomer of almost legendary status, few are aware that he also composed his own original works. Not surprisingly, the cello features largely in most of his compositions. Among the most popular is El Cant del Ocells or The Song of the Birds. This traditional Catalan nativity carol lies close to Casals’ patriotic heart. Exiled from Spain by the Fascist dictatorship in 1939, he usually began each public recital with this hauntingly poignant melody. Framed by shimmering tremolos, the main section is marked by the “modal” sound of the harmonic minor scale, combining E-flat and F-sharp in the context of G minor. Many years later, while addressing the United Nations in 1971, Casals described El Cant del Ocells with the following words in his broken English: “The birds in the sky, in the space, sing ‘Peace, peace, peace.’ This song is the soul of my country – Catalonia.”

Born and raised in London, Hannah Kendall (b. 1984) studied music at the University of Exeter before completing a master’s degree at the Royal College of Music and a doctorate at Columbia University. Kendall has become renowned both as a composer and a storyteller, confronting our collective history with narratively-driven pieces centred on bold mission statements. Kendall’s work has been described as “exquisitely crafted” (The Seattle Times) and “searingly impactful” (The New Statesman). She has worked with the most significant ensembles and festivals around the globe, including Boston Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, BBC Proms, Berliner Festspiele, Lucerne Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, and countless others. In 2022 she received the Hindemith Prize for outstanding contemporary composers.

Composed in 2020, Kendall’s Tuxedo: Hot Summer, No Water is an extraordinary piece for solo cello inspired by the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the movement for racial justice. Evoking a spirit of restlessness and irritation, the piece opens with “Then Shall the Eyes of the Blind Be Open’d” from Handel’s Messiah played on an archaic sounding music box, while the cellist hums the traditional spiritual “Wade in the Water.” However, there is no balm of water in this piece. The climax arrives as a piercing police whistle, a sonic “timestamp” pointing to a year defined by the police’s presence in black communities. The score is prefaced by a passage from Isaiah, offering a plea for a peaceful and just world where the eyes of the blind will be opened and mute tongues will shout for joy.

Born in New York City and raised in Staunton, Joe Jaxson (b. 2000) was surrounded by a combination of Smooth Jazz, Soul, and R&B along with classical and Christian Gospel music. Having grown up with these genres constantly blended, Jaxson developed a strong ear for music and sound. He earned a bachelors degree in composition at James Madison University in 2022, studying with Eric Guinivan and Jason Haney. Jaxson is currently a doctoral candidate at UT Austin studying with Donald Grantham, Yevgeniy Sharlat, and Omar Thomas. Less than a year ago, his orchestral work Through the Bay won the American Prize in Composition within the orchestra-college division. That was only the most recent of many high-profile awards and commissions for this talented (and still very young) composer.

Jaxson composed Mountains Stars in 2022 for the Wintergreen Music Festival – hence the descriptive title. He had been invited to Wintergreen as part of their LEAD Cooperative, a flourishing program that fosters exceptional musicians, composers, and arts leaders at the earliest stages of their careers. The first performance of Mountain Stars was given by cellist Sarah Kapps. The piece moves between passages of intense rhythmic propulsion and others of soaring sustained tones. In less than four minutes, Jaxson samples many of the cello’s most recognizable timbres: deeply resonant low notes, piercing high harmonics, thrumming pizzicati, and a physicality that engages the whole performer’s body.

INTERMISSION

In the midst of extremely heated political and military confrontations, artists helped quietly to connect Western Europe / America with the Soviet Union, planting seeds for several important face-to-face encounters. This was the time, of course, of Van Cliburn – that red-headed towering Texan – and his triumph at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. Two years later, London audiences enjoyed the first performance outside Russia of Shostakovich’s new Cello Concerto. The work was written for and dedicated to the brilliant cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. In the London audience that evening in September 1960 was a very impressed and enthusiastic English composer named Benjamin Britten (1913-1976).

At the time of this performance, Britten was already well-established as perhaps England’s greatest living composer. Precocious talent brought him into contact with influential teachers and performers from a young age. Britten had already mastered the viola and begun writing chamber works for all combinations of duo and trio textures. At 14 he was placed in the hands of Frank Bridge, a leading voice in the older generation of English composers; Britten also studied with John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams during a less enjoyable stint at the Royal College of Music from 1930 to 1933. Gustav Mahler’s distant influence was keen, emerging in the heightened expressiveness of Britten’s early works.

Britten had planned to study abroad in Vienna after graduation. Instead, heeding the advice of friends and family, he remained in the UK and cut his teeth on a series of theatrical and cinematic scores. During this period he befriended W. H. Auden (the two worked together on numerous projects) and then tenor Peter Pears, who would become Britten’s muse and lifelong partner. They spent several years in America before returning to England. In 1945 Britten’s name became internationally known following the premiere of his first major opera, Peter Grimes. Over the remaining three decades he composed another 14 operas, including Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Death in Venice.

At the London performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto, Britten was clearly delighted to meet both the composer and soloist in person. According to one person’s recollection, Britten was “bobbing up and down like a school boy, even nudging [Shostakovich] with happiness at the music.” Perhaps even more significantly, the personal rapport between Britten and Rostropovich started quickly and lasted until Britten’s death in 1976, fueling several new compositions from the Englishman’s pen. Almost immediately came the Cello Sonata in 1961 followed by the Cello Symphony in 1963 – the latter premiered in Moscow by Rostropovich and Britten conducting the Moscow Philharmonic. These initial forays spilled over quickly into three suites for solo cello, the first of which is performed today.

Britten’s Suite No. 1 for cello (1964) includes nine movements played consecutively without pause. Structurally, the Suite employs a recurring “canto” theme: sonorous, two-voice chords that appear four times in all, marking out subsections within the overall form. Bach’s presence hovers over the music, of course, particularly in the chromatic Fugue. However, immense credit must go to Britten – and Rostropovich, who certainly gave feedback along the way – for moving beyond the Baroque model. Here an immense diversity of ideas is brought forth: a powerful Lament built one pure note at a time; a strummed pizzicato Serenade à la guitarra; a March literally bursting with color (note the frequent harmonics and col legno playing); a technically demanding Bordone or drone-based movement; and a stunning Moto Perpetuo finale. It is difficult to believe – almost as difficult as Casals’ miraculous discovery of Bach’s Suites in that Barcelona shop – that Britten had only just recently written anything for solo cello.

Jason Stell, © 2026