Bach: Cello Suites – René Schiffer

Anyone familiar with Apollo’s Fire will recognise the exceptional baroque orchestra’s engaging and entertaining principal cellist René Schiffer. Featured on dozens of the Apollo’s Fire recordings, René steps into the spotlight for his solo debut recording with a meticulous rendering of that pillar of the baroque repertoire, J.S. Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello. Deploying different instruments – a 1768 Benoît Fleury cello for the first four suites, an anonymous late 18th century violoncello piccolo with an added string for the fifth (in his own arrangement) and sixth – and multiple tunings, René’s distinctive interpretations are in harmony with his comprehensive and probing liner notes which abound with theories and intellectual insights.