Also available on Blu-ray In 2018, Yo-Yo Ma began a two-year journey, setting out to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in...

Also available on Blu-ray

In 2018, Yo-Yo Ma began a two-year journey, setting out to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in one sitting, across 36 locations on 6 continents. For Yo-Yo, Bach’s 300-hundred-year-old music is one extraordinary example of how culture connects us and can help us to imagine and build a better future. In an unforgettable experience the 19 times Grammy ® Award winner and internationally acclaimed cellist performed the Cello Suites at the overwhelming Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens. Yo-Yo Ma says: “These suites are so meaningful. They’re not only companions and friends, but they’ve also been reference points in my life.” “Soft sounds around me suggested that others were caught up in similarly strong emotions. How Ma has this effect on people is a mystery: I suspect it has to do with the warmth he brings to music that is fundamentally beyond comprehension. He makes the godlike human.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker)


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REVIEWS:

He doesn’t ‘ham-up’ his Bach, but there is more spontaneity here than I’ve heard from Ma before in his studio recordings, and playfulness and profundity alike are communicated with more directness and a feel of risk which is quite bracing. Every recording is a captured moment in time, and this is a unique document of a consummate artist performing the greatest of music composed for his instrument. If you are a fan of Yo-Yo Ma and/or of Bach’s Six Suites then you will want this.

– MusicWeb International

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma brings a lifetime of experience and sensitivity to the works, maintaining their intimacy even within this vast arena, and not a note is out of place. If you don’t know the suites well just listen to the third which is so full of life and joy. A recording to treasure.

– Lark Reviews (Dr. Brian Hick