Complete Bach Cello Suites -Arranged for Guitar-

Review Of the six suites Johann Sebastian Bach composed for solo cello (in 1720 or thereabouts), he later arranged one to be also playable on the lute. Nicolella is not the first guitarist to take the bait and do the same for the other five, but I can t imagine it being done more beautifully. On his recording of all six suites, years in the making, his playing is impeccable even in the face of head-spinning difficulties; and as the two-disc set's engineer, he captures about as ravishing a guitar tone, both lush and crystalline, as I ve ever heard on record. As Bach did in his reworking, Nicolella adds discreet accompanying voices to Bach's one-note-at-a-time textures and better still, knows just when not to add them: for example, in bravura scale passages, or in the pure cold water of the simple cascading arpeggios at the beginning of the fourth suite. (Some movements, in fact, like this one and the Prelude from the first suite already very guitarish with its wide-spaced broken chords sound better here, I think, than on cello.) On top of this, Nicolella improvises ornamentation (again, according to Bachian tradition), which adds further intensifying expressiveness and soulfulness. Every guitarist whether your interest is baroque, bluegrass, blues, or Norwegian death metal should hear these. -- Seattle Weekly - Gavin Borchert Of all the guitarists I wish I'd seen in concert, Seattle-based Michael Nicolella is a contender for the top slot. Having devoted much of his past creativity to presenting and expanding the contemporary repertoire (CGs passim), this 2014 release finds him exploring a baroque cycle that has long been fertile terrain for arranger/transcribers. The prospect is intriguing, largely because it's difficult to imagine how a guitarist known for his originality of thought is going to break new ground here.The clue lies in the track listing, where Nicolella cites the 'lute version' of the fifth suite. This he expands with the following statement: 'I arranged the remaining five suites with Bach's lute arrangement serving as a template. It guided all decisions, including key choice, the realisation of implied lines, as well as the addition and handling of bass lines and filled-out harmonies.' Rarely has a dismissal of unmodified cello-to-guitar transcriptions been so explicitly stated. This is borne out in the Prelude to the first suite in which,