For more than two centuries, the Paris Conservatoire has maintained a glorious cello tradition, which since 2003 has been upheld by Marc Coppey. As a tribute to the spirit of his predecessors, he now presents three of the most famous nineteenth century cello concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns, Édouard Lalo and Léon Boëllmann, all united on one album.

Jean Lauxerois begins his notes to Marc Coppey’s recording of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites by enumerating the many reasons why yet another version of these familiar works “to swell the ever-growing ranks” is superfluous, then explains Coppey’s decision to ignore the arguments as “obedience to a deeper logic, a feeling of necessity”. Lauxerois offers many examples of this “deeper logic”–such as that the Suites somehow correspond to the six days of creation (and on the seventh day God rested…), or that the Suites somehow possess an internal universal code summarizing Leibnitz’s best-of-all-possible-worlds theorem. While it’s impossible to know exactly how obedient Coppey has been to this “deeper logic”, thankfully he delivers an expertly performed set that on purely musical terms renders such rhetorical tripe irrelevant.

This live recording of the two Shostakovich cello concertos continues audite's successful cooperation with Marc Coppey, who approaches both works with boundless energy and without any sentimentality.