THE FIRST MONAURAL RECORDING OF BACH SIX SUITES

The first monaural recording of Bach’s Six Suites BWV 1007-1012, played with the great unaccompanied five stringed cello, regarded as a reference for the modality, was performed in France in 1953, on the Ducretet-Thomsom label, in a performance at Villandry Castle, and, as an interpreter, the virtuous celist Annlies Schmidt-de Neveu, who dedicated the interpretation and recording to her master Emmanuel Feuermann. Well, Viola Pomposa, Viola da “Spalla” or Cello “Piccolo” ?, that is the question … 

Since the death of Bach in 1750, paper and ink have not lacked the ranks that formed opinion on the mystery of the Viola Pomposa. In addition to being ambiguous, speculations have been unsuccessful in identifying and qualifying the original instrument that the great musician conceived and used as an ‘obbligato’ instrument in the reinforcement of bass, for the majestic circumstance of his Cantatas in deep reverence to the Lutheran cult, as well as , In the pomp of the Concertos for several instruments, in particular the third and sixth, with emphasis on the Violas, dedicated to the Margrave of Bradenburgo, or, in the sumptuousness of the Suites Solo, especially the sixth, the “Symphony for Cello Solo” like said by Rostropovich.
Thus, in the run-up to the attempts, the enigma has remained through the last two and a half centuries. Perhaps, for a musician of mathematical thinking like John Sebastian Bach, although unconsciously formulated, a proposal of challenge for the future, as it was with the solution of the last Fermat’s theorem, and for the Bach artist of deistic sensitivity, a riddle like the smile that Leonardo, a virtuoso of all the arts, characterized in the Gioconda, which, like Bach’s music, with the passing of time, never lost its beauty, Indeed! Gioconda or Mona Lisa? – Saulo Zucchello