Kevin Sutton wrote in response to Don Satz:

>>...the Kirchbaum on Virgin is performed on period cello.  It is
>>an excellent performance.
>
>I have no reason to doubt your word, Don, but are you sure? It sounds like
>a modern instrument to me and I have never known Kirschbaum to be a period
>instrument kind of guy.

The Kirshbaum set happens to be thoe only one I own.  He plays a Domenico
Mantagnana made in Venice 1729.  So is it period performance? I don't
really think so.  I doesn't soind like that, not if you compare to Anner
Biljsma.

This is by the what Gramophone wrote:

   Bach Solo Cello [Suite] Suites, BWV1007-12. Ralph Kirshbaum (vc).
   Virgin Classics (Full price) (CD) VCD5 45086-2 (2 discs: 140 minutes: DDD)
   Bach Solo Cello [Suite] Suites, BWV1007-12. Nathaniel Rosen (vc).
   John Marks Records (Full price) (CD) JMR6/7 (2 discs: 137 minutes: DDD)

   Selected comparisons:
   Bylsma (7/81) (R) (RCA) RD70950
   Bylsma (1/93) (SONY) 82K48047
   Claret (3/95) (AUVI) V4695

   A modern cello is used in each of these sets, neither of which makes
   any special claim to 'authenticity' but the performances are materially
   different.  In the Prelude of the First Suite Kirshbaum plays the
   tenth and twelfth semiquavers of bar 26 (c1'40"), both Bs, as natural
   and flat respectively-which is what Anna Magdalena's manuscript shows
   whereas Rosen is not the first to play them both as flats.  Kirshbaum
   stresses the second beat of the first bar (and other comparable ones)
   of the Sarabande of the same Suite; Rosen misses the point.  He also
   seems to have missed that relating to trills, f which he doggedly-and
   with irritating clarity-begins on the main note throughout, Kirshbaum
   gets them right but by the time he reaches the Fourth Suite some of
   them become mysteriously urngekehrt.  Why 'mysteriously'? Because he
   is patently well enough informed in baroque performance practice to
   exercise his freedom to embellish by adding ornaments here and there
   and indulging in the occasional touch of diminution, as in the final
   bar of the repeat of the first section of the second Bourree (3'07").
   Yet he refuses the invitations to add appoggiaturas in the opening
   section of the Prelude of the Fifth Suite, readily accepted by
   lutenists.  Kirshbaum's are nevertheless wonderfully eloquent readings,
   with flowing, nuanced lines and always with a sense of purpose that
   is not always apparent with Rosen compare, for instance, their accounts
   of the Prelude of the Fourth Suite through which Rosen plods laboriously
   whilst Kirshbaum imparts a sense of forward movement and gives it
   overall shape.  Rosen's view of the works is somewhat romantic, with
   numerous slow tempos that prompt one to wonder whether there has been
   a voltage drop in one's area, overlong pauses such as that at 1'23"
   in the Prelude of the First Suite, and an occasional willingness to
   slide along the aural scenic route from one note to the next.  Neither
   is his intonation as secure, or his tone as unfailingly pure when he
   digs his bow deep, as Kirshbaum's.

   Rosen presents the Suites in order, three per disc, omitting the
   repeats in the Allemandes of all three Suites on the second disc and
   the second-section repeat in the Gigue of the Sixth Suite, had he
   not done so the playing time would have exceeded the capacity of the
   disc.  Kirshbaum, like others before him, juggles their sequence in
   order to preserve all repeats, a better solution.  Rosen's set does
   not disturb the present 'pecking order', whilst Kirshbaum's joins
   that of Lluis Claret at the top of the modern-instrument tree but
   both behind those of Anner Bylsma on a period instrument.

   JD

By the way, judging from Don's letter, all of us bachelors should perhaps
move to Albuquerque

Patrik