All is Vanity
Look where you will, you see only vanity on earth.
What some build today others tear down tomorrow:
Where now stand towns there will be a meadow
On which a shepherd’s child will play with the herds:
What now splendid flowers shall soon be trodden down
What now struts and preens will be ash and bone tomorrow,
There is nothing can be eternal, no metal, no marble stone.
Now Fortune smiles on us, but soon hardships will threaten
The fame of great deeds must be like a fleeting dream.
Why should the plaything of time, the frivolous human, endure?
Oh! What is all this that we regard as precious
But worthless nothingness, than shadows, dust and wind,
But a wild flower that cannot be found again.
That which is eternal yet no human wills to see!
All is Vanity, Andreas Gryphius (1637)
The work on my project "Bach im Spiegel" took about 4 years, if you count the length of the recording dates. How do these long periods of time come about when a CD is made? A detailed list would be boring here, but I would like to mention the coordination of appointments with the sound engineer, practice phases and delays in composing the commissioned works. A project like this is also based on the never-ending learning process and a lifelong study of the cellists' Bible: the 6 monumental suites by Johann Sebastian Bach!
In my youth I was first touched by what we now call “historically informed performance practice”. First of all, I was influenced by the recording of Heinrich Schiff, which was highly praised by the great pioneer of this style of playing, Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
During my studies I got deeper into this fascinating aspect of music making : The study of the texts by Quantz, Leopold Mozart and Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach as the son of the great Johann Sebastian, as well as of course the comparison of sources of the existing copies of Bach's suites initially revealed one thing above all: Great confusion up towards despair! The "information jam" meant that I no longer knew how to play now. With or without vibrato? How important is the rhetoric of music? Sound? Phrasing?
Finally, I remembered the meaning of the word: interpreter!
After all this, sometimes very contradicting information, I ultimately had to make a decision myself. And with a very unscientific criterion: With my taste.
And so, what you're going to hear here is a hybrid version:
My cello is from 1730, but I play it with modern strings. I play the 5th suite with “Scordatura” (the A string is tuned down to “G”), but I didn't use a baroque bow ...
However, the moment of the recording is always a snapshot, especially with these periods of time that I describe above. Sometimes I find my own interpretations even after years still convincing and beautiful. But sometimes the opposite is also the case and I wish I had approached this or that point more daringly, had explored more extremes, because there is an old rule among musicians: What touches you in your room, what you feel while playing is not necessarily what reaches the listener! Often you really need exaggerated effects to evoke what moves you deeply, to bring it close to the listener in the same way as you feel it inside yourself ...
One word may be said about the "architecture" of the suites and their religious content:
You have to try to put yourself in the shoes of the people of the time. The power that religion and church had over everyday life can hardly be overestimated. In addition, Bach wrote mainly religious works, so he was constantly and repeatedly close to the religious world of feeling, the mysticism of change, for example, or the ordeal of Jesus. It speaks for his humble attitude in the Christian sense that he includes among all (!) His works, at least in an abbreviated form, the “Solo Dei Gloria”, which means “God alone be the glory”! Think about it: In Bach's time, as is well known, a Europe-wide, devastating war raged that lasted 30 years! There were also pandemics like the plague! All of these influences led to this worldly life, life before death, being given the famous term “valley of tears”. Paradise, but also hell, were omnipresent in people's minds!
The poem quoted at the beginning reflects the Baroque attitude towards life very well.
For me personally, there is no question that the 6 suites by Bach for cello alone have a clear structure, an architecture in their layout. It cannot be a coincidence that the penultimate, fifth suite is in C minor, one of the darkest keys often associated with death,
. Afterwards comes the jubilant beginning, the swinging 12/8 time of the prelude of the sixth suite in D - Just like the Hallelujah from Handel! This is a resurrection, a redemption that could not have been expressed more clearly in words! Historically, the sarabande is one of the four central movements of a suite. (Allemande, Courante Sarabande, Gigue). In the fifth suite, the sarabande is just a "musical skeleton", in reality it consists only of the utmost necessary. Yet the intensity of the expression is second to none, you can literally see the crucified Christ before you when you hear this music ...
I hope that my interpretation will arouse in you the same feelings that I was able to experience during the long study of these works.
Last but not least, I would like to thank many supporters:
To the producer Giovanni Conti, who has just fulfilled his lifelong dream over a cup of coffee, to Michael Rast, the Franconian veteran and the many ideas, some of which were born while hiking in the mountains, and of course for editing. Thanks also to Giulio Mercati, who invited me to play all the suites in the beautiful church "Santa Maria degli Angioli" and accompanied me into the baroque world whenever possible. I would also like to thank my teachers Claus Hütterott and especially Tilmann Wick. And of course I owe a lot to the years of patience of a mother who actually had little love for Bach in the beginning, a father who introduced me to the world of Bach's oratorios and passions and also a brother who walked this path with me. And my wife, who sat in the sacristy whenever she could and supported me mentally and emotionally while playing ...
Felix Vogelsang 2022