A very personal vision indeed: Mats Lidström in Bach’s Cello Suites as part of Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra’s Bach Mendelssohn Festival

Title page of Anna Magdalena Bach’s manuscript: Suites á Violoncello Solo senza Basso

Bach: Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, Cello Suite No. 4 in E flat major, Cello Suite No. 6 in D major, Partita in A minor, BWV 1013; Mats Lidström; Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra’s Bach Mendelssohn Festival at Holywell Music Room, Oxford
Reviewed 1 March 2025

Three of Bach’s solo cello suites in highly personal, not to say idiosyncratic performances by one of Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra’s solo cellos as part of its joint survey of Bach and Mendelssohn

We don’t know when, why or for whom Bach’s cello suites were written, though we can deduce a lot. For a start, they are a coherent group not an assemblage, deliberate works, all six structured the same. We can perhaps imagine one of Bach’s cellists in Köthen (where the kapelle had three fine cello players in it) playing a suite for the instrument music loving Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, Bach’s employer at the time the suites were probably written.

But we have no real performing tradition for the works, simply Anna Magdalena Bach’s manuscript written years after their creation, and subject to some discussion as to slurs and phrasing. For much of the 19th century, though the works were known, they were regarded as mere studies and it was only when cellist Pablo Casals discovered them and started playing the suites as coherent works that they took off.

It could be argued that even to play the cello suites on a modern cello is to make a transcription, so different sonically and technically are the instruments. And in performance, each cellist must make their own stylistic choices. How much of this is pure music and how much a simulacrum of the past.

A composer himself, Mats Lidström is solo cello with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and on Saturday 1 March 2024 he performed three of Bach’s cello suites at Oxford’s Holywell Music Room. Lidström was taking up the baton from his Oxford Philharmonic colleague Peter Adams, between them the two performing Bach’s complete cello suites as part of the Oxford Philharmonic’s Bach Mendelssohn Festival. On Saturday, we heard Mats Lidström in Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, Cello Suite No. 4 in E flat major and Cello Suite No. 6 in D major along with the Partita in A minor, BWV 1013, originally for solo flute.

I could have wished that the festival had been a little more daring, and at some point given us Mendelssohn’s Bach, rather than simply placing the two composers alongside each other. How refreshing to hear something like the Partita in E major for solo violin, to which Mendelssohn provided piano accompaniment, or even Schumann’s version of Cello Suite No. 3 with piano accompaniment. Not to our taste nowadays, but surely an important pointer to these early Romantic composers’ view of Bach.

In terms of the cello suites, we can perhaps trace a line between Mats Lidström and those of Pablo Casals. The strongly interventionist nature of Lidström’s performance was allied to a full range of romantic expressive devices. These were vigorous, multicoloured accounts of the music, less concerned with stylistic considerations of Bach’s day and more about expressing the notes for what they meant to Lidström today, using his full expressive range. That said, there was something highly personal about the performance, as if we were simply eavesdropping on Lidström performing and certainly he was totally bound up in the music and less concerned with communicating directly to us.

I thought perhaps that adding the Flute Partita was, to an extent, over-egging the pudding. I am less familiar with this work. In Lidström’s performance it seemed to fit neatly alongside the cellos suites and was probably written at a similar date, how much of the flute writing was adjusted editorially, I am not clear.

There was little sense of these are Baroque dance suites, the notes were simply expressive devices to be interpreted in ways that Lidström felt appropriate. This was a very personal vision indeed. His phrasing was highly romantic throughout, with strong tone and an expressive variation of this tone. I found the result rather stylised; Lidström’s approach to phrasing seemed uneven and his dynamics were definitely 21st century in approach. There is no disputing the bravura nature of some of his playing, but overall the performances did not feel crowd-pleasing and I was rather left wondering quite what the performance was for.

The Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra’s Bach Mendelssohn Festival continues until 20 March, see website for details.