Album Evaluate: Maya Beiser | Infinite Bach

Maya Beiser | Infinite Bach

(Islandia Music)

Did the world really want yet one more recording of Bach’s cello suites? Judging by Maya Beiser’s new tackle them as mirrored on Infinite Bach, the reply is a particular sure. Beiser’s three-CD set of Bach’s six suites for solo cello is without delay a staggering efficiency and a technological marvel, capturing her dwell efficiency in addition to the acoustical nuances in overtones, reflections, and reverberations that lend the sound a multi-dimensional, breathy high quality—a “spatial audio combine.” However all this know-how wouldn’t quantity to a hill of beans if Beiser—who recorded the album in a barn studio at her Berkshires residence with the help of engineer and sound mixer Dave Prepare dinner of Saugerties—had not introduced one thing new and private to the music, which, as one would anticipate from this globally acknowledged virtuoso (a cofounder of the Bang on a Can All-Stars who has recorded works by the likes of Philip Glass, David Bowie, Tan Dun, Steve Reich, Nirvana, and Howlin’ Wolf), she does.

This isn’t one other austere, mathematical rendition of what Bach put to paper, however slightly a extremely private, soulful, impassioned rendition of the work. Beiser efficiently navigates the divide between rigorous classical strategy and her avant-garde leanings. Whereas she breathes new life into it, Bach’s “textual content” is rarely toyed with, as a result of Beiser is a fervent believer that Bach’s genius opens the door to “countless interpretation,” or, because the title suggests, “infinite Bach.”