Much of Bach's music is abstract enough that it can easily be arranged for new instrumental combinations, and often was by the composer himself. The music for unaccompanied violin and for unaccompanied cello forms an exceptional case; the sonatas and partitas for solo violin were part of a long tradition of virtuoso violin music to which Bach was making a conscious contribution, and the six suites for solo cello were written as extensions of the ideas in the violin pieces. Transferring the cello suites to a solo recorder, which is incapable of executing many details of the cello scores, is thus something Bach probably wouldn't have countenanced. And the single biggest problem, the collection of double and triple stops Bach uses to imply full harmonies, is imperfectly solved by recorder player and transcriber
Marion Verbruggen: she replaces them with quick little arpeggios. Sometimes these work well; sometimes, in relatively unornamented movements strongly marked by dance rhythms (such as the minuets in the Suite No. 2, BWV 1008), they remind one of the noise an analog tuner makes as it zips by unwanted stations.
With all these warnings out of the way, let it be said that
Marion Verbruggen is a fearsomely talented virtuosa of the recorder. There isn't a hint of the pitch instability that makes the alto recorder (or in one work, BWV 1008, the tenor recorder or "voice flute") such a torment to hear in the hands of lesser players. In fast passagework she not only executes the lines cleanly but varies them subtly upon repetition -- no small feat on a recorder. Her rhythmically free treatments of the dance movements are artfully constructed so as to make room for the passages in which the recorder has to stretch, and the result is a set of consistent and enthusiastic performances that draw in the listener who may approach skeptically but will likely be converted at the end. This is true even though the sound engineering may delay that conversion a bit: the two discs in the set were recorded at different places and times (disc 1 at, of all places, Skywalker Sound in California), and there's a bit of a sonic lurch between the two discs, now reissued as a budget-priced duo. Of course, the last three suites also inhabit a slightly different world from the first three themselves -- note that they time out here at almost 76 minutes, while the first three last for just under 54. Bach, it would seem, became more and more enmeshed as he went along in the skeins of ideas he had created, and
Verbruggen captures this spirit of elaboration in her playing. The bottom line: despite the difficulties with the overall concept, recorder players and those who love them will find a major statement of the instrument's potentialities here.