Bach and me: Thomas Demenga on the Cello Suites

This article appeared in The Strad October 2012 issue

For me, Bach is the greatest musical genius who has ever lived. His music is pure, sublime, and devoid of the melodrama of his own life’s experiences: it possesses something divine and each musician has a lifetime in which to discover new ways of interpreting it.

Even when the Swingle Singers laced his works with jazz harmonies, or Jacques Loussier’s Play Bach Trio added their own jazz improvisations, Bach’s music proved indestructible. I still recall the release of Wendy Carlos’s album Switched-On Bach in 1968, which rendered everything from the Third Brandenburg Concerto to The Well-Tempered Clavier on the Moog synthesiser. It was an experiment that many music lovers considered a crime but even then, Bach remained Bach and we simply heard his music. If you were to try this with any other composer it would most likely be unbearable. Imagine Schumann’s Cello Concerto on electronic instruments, for instance – unthinkable and a complete catastrophe.

However, for years in my recitals, I have been juxtaposing Bach’s Cello Suites with contemporary music. This month I perform the first in a three-concert series, putting the First and Sixth Suites together with pieces by Bernd Alois Zimmermann and myself. I find this form of programming inspiring, and I am quite certain that Bach would have been delighted by it – during his lifetime he was interested in all the composers of the day, and never expressed himself in a condescending way towards his peers.