Review: William Skeen Casts New Light on Well-Loved Compositions on ‘The Six Cello Suites of J.S. Bach’

By Miranda Wilson From the May/June 2025 issue of Strings

For any other piece in the canonical cello repertoire, one might wonder what was left to be said after hundreds of recorded interpretations and countless thousands of performances. Not so with Bach’s cello suites, which continue to hold endless fascination for cellists. Each new version seems to cast new light on these well-loved compositions, and this album by William Skeen is no exception. The liner notes to the album, recorded under pandemic conditions in 2020, describe it as “a snapshot of [Skeen’s] conception of the work, definitive for this moment, a reflection of who he is as an artist right now.”

Unlike some of the soloists who have recorded Bach’s suites, Skeen’s career path includes many years of playing continuo bass lines in period-instrument chamber and orchestral ensembles across the United States, and a teaching profile that includes viola da gamba as well as cello. This breadth of experience comes through in his dialogue-like approach to voicing and articulation in Bach’s preludes and dance movements. Skeen’s melodic lines speak as much as they sing, and his flexible sense of pulse gives each “conversation” a chance for expressive ups and downs.

One feature that sets Skeen’s interpretation apart from many others is his conception of tempi. The moderate, deliberate pace of his preludes and some of the dance movements differs from the brisker pace on other period-instrument recorded interpretations, such as those of Anner Bylsma. The Prelude of Suite No. 4 definitely veers more toward the “organist Bach” than the “lutenist Bach” one can hear on the recordings of Pieter Wispelwey. By contrast, Skeen’s sarabandes avoid the deathly slow pace of some recordings on modern instruments and never lose the underlying idea of a dance—sedate dancing, but dancing nonetheless.

For me, the standout on the disc was the D major Suite. Here, Skeen’s five-string violoncello piccolo—an anonymous Italian instrument of the 1680s—sings with a resonance and balance across all strings that is hard to find on a five-string instrument. In his hands, the tone is light, lyrical, and almost viola-like in timbre. Skeen’s Allemande has a timeless quality, in contrast to a skipping Courante. An easy-going Gigue brings the album to a satisfying conclusion.