Lynden Cranham's earliest memories of Bach were overwhelming, sitting in the huge and resonant space of Westminster Cathedral listening to an organ recital. She subsequently...

Lynden Cranham's earliest memories of Bach were overwhelming, sitting in the huge and resonant space of Westminster Cathedral listening to an organ recital. She subsequently became fascinated (as a listener and a player) by the Bach Cello Suites. It was especially poignant for Lynden, as part of the orchestra during John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, not only to play near the font where Bach had been baptized, in the Georgenkirche in Eisenach, but also to play in Köthen, where he probably composed the Cello Suites. The idea of recording the Suites had been at the back of her mind for most of her career, and when playing part of one of them in a chamber-music concert a few years ago she realized that she'd found an ideal venue for doing such a recording: the beautiful small church of St Peter and St Mary in Fishbourne, West Sussex, complete with its warm, intimate acoustic.

As one concert after another was cancelled it gradually became clear to the recording engineer, the producer and Lynden that, dire as this situation was, it provided the perfect opportunity to begin recording the Suites. So, braving the cold (and maintaining strict social distancing), Suites 1 and 2 were recorded in the church in December 2020. Soon after that, in April 2021, Suite No. 5 was recorded in its original scordatura version; this needed to be recorded alone, as in that way Lynden was able to keep the cello with the A string tuned down to G. Those three Suites make an interesting contrast – the first two relatively conventional in sonority, the fifth introducing something entirely different.