Cello students start learning bits of the suites early. Yo-Yo Ma first took them up at age four. “I remember really liking the connections between the movements in the first suite,” he says. “I found a certain calm, kind of an inner peace, in playing a suite right before bedtime. Playing Bach is very different from the storm and stress of daily life.”

German cellist Maria Kliegel, who recorded the suites for Naxos, started on them later than Ma, but took to them right away. “My teacher gave the music to me when I was 13 or 14, starting with the first suite,” she recalls. “It sank into my life that way. I liked it very much, and never thought of them as etudes, as many people do. There’s so much life in them, and balance—how to project things without disturbing the lines—and so forth.”

It took longer for the suites to grow on Jian Wang. “I didn’t feel quite connected to them; they were not expressive enough for me,” he says. “As I grow older, I am learning to accept, and I’m finding peace and inner harmony in acceptance. I found that feeling in Bach; the suites comfort me.”

The Bach suites have both comforted and confronted Suren Bagratuni through all phases of his education and career. The Armenian-born professor of cello at Michigan State University won the Silver Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition. He made a strikingly personal recording of the suites for Blue Griffin Recording, during a difficult period in his life, the details of which he’d prefer not to discuss. “I find these recordings, particularly the last three suites, very emotional,” he admits.

“That is the way it had to be during the four days I was making the recordings. It’s a tremendous responsibility. You have to have something new to say that is from your inner world. You can’t change the text or the key signatures or the notes. The only new thing you can say is what is in your soul.”

The word “soul” brings up the spiritual nature of the suites, although there’s some disagreement about whether that spirituality resides in the music itself, or is drawn from the player.

Says Jian Wang, “For me, a great performance is the kind that reminds the listeners of their own story and sentiments, rather than the kind that imposes the performer’s feelings on them.

“With his cello suites, Bach tells a story, perhaps, but he never tries to preach a view or make you feel one way or the other. That is why his music reminds me of the great poems from China. Poems only give you the fundamentals of a story, and our imaginations have to complete the picture.

“Perhaps because of his religious background, Bach’s music has purity of heart, humbleness, and respect. Perhaps Bach always wrote for God, perhaps not; all I can say is that when I hear his music, I hear a perfectly balanced, beautiful, and comforting world. The challenge for a cellist when playing these pieces is to open the door to this world for the audience and inspire them to get in touch with their own feelings.”

Counters Ma, “I think that in Bach’s universe, the individual is acknowledged and important, but is not at the center of the universe. [Regarding the music’s spiritual nature,] I think that Casals, who first presented the unaccompanied suites to the world, said it best in the title of his autobiography: Joys and Sorrows.”