E9. Alex Rolton: Bach Cello Suites 4,5,6

Friends' Booking from 10 Aug 2026.

General Booking from 24 Aug 2026.1.

The Baroque CelloEvent 9: Saturday 10th October, 3:15pmJohann Sebastian Bach Suite no4 in E flat major; BWV1010 Suite no5 in C minor BWV1011; Suite no6 in D major BWV1012Alex Rolton baroque celloAlex Rolton has been with the Philharmonia Orchestra since 2018 and plays an 18th-century English cello.

He'll be switching to a piccolo cello (played on the lap or round the chest) for the D major Suite, which is scored for five strings rather than the normal four.2.

Playing the cello through the centuriesEvent 10: Saturday 10th October, 5:00-5:45pm This event is freeA conversation among the four cellists playing for us this afternoon and evening on how stylistic practice has evolved from Bach's time to our own.

The session will be chaired by Ed McKeon and will be open to questions from the audience.For those buying tickets for all three events 9, 11(a) and 11(b), discounted bundle prices of 55, 39 and 19 will apply.

The Red Lion is also offering a 2-course meal for audience members for 17.50 at 6pm.

Please book directly with the pub (01494 862876) and say that you are Festival-goers.Bach Suites for Solo Cello (Events 9, 10, 11(a) and 11(b)) It's thought that Bach's six Cello Suites were written when he was employed at the court in Kothen in the 1720s, around the same time as the Brandenberg Concertos and the Violin Sonatas and Partitas.

But there's no single definitive manuscript of the Suites and one theory to account for the discrepancies in the very few manuscript scores that are extant is that Bach continued to work on them, and that there may never in fact have been a 'final' version.

There are therefore uncertainties about dates but also - more importantly - about interpretation.

Other questions include the player for whom he might have written them (perhaps himself - although there's only limited evidence he played cello - or for another at the Kothen court) and even the actual instrument he wrote for.

But perhaps the most striking thing of all is that they were largely forgotten and unplayed until about a century after Bach's death, when the first published edition emerged.

And they only really entered the public domain with Casals' 1930s recordings, by which time detailed knowledge of early 18thcentury performance practice in Germany (and indeed elsewhere) had largely dissipated.

So assumptions made today about this music have to remain just that - assumptions - and presenting the Suites in three versions therefore seemed to us a useful way of relating to the strange history of these timeless masterpieces - not timeless in an abstract sense but rather that they've carried a number of both practical and historical possibilities with them ever since they entered the repertoire.More information and events on our website