Sentimental Work: Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas on the violoncello piccolo

I was introduced to Bach from a very young age. My musical life began when I took up the guitar aged seven. My mother played records by Andrés Segovia to encourage me, which included a number of 78s of him playing excerpts of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, and Cello Suites. So when I picked up the cello, aged twelve, the natural thing was to start learning what I’d already studied on the guitar.

It was only about eight years ago that I started playing the complete Sonatas and Partitas on the four-string violoncello piccolo, a small-size version of the cello. At the time, I was the only person I knew who was playing all the Sonatas and Partitas on the instrument; in fact it was impossible to find an E string the right size for it, so I had to borrow one of my wife’s harp strings to make one of my own! I effectively transformed it into a bass violin, and began with the First Sonata in G minor. It was incredibly liberating to enter into this new world of polyphony; with every note I felt as though I was an explorer entering uncharted territory for the first time…