Encounter: The Bach Suites and Ravel

Jan Vogler, cello
Yevgeny Kutik, violin

Through Bach’s Cello Suites Nos. 1 and 6 and Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, The Birch Festival traces a journey from solitude to encounter, and from encounter to transformation. With the musicianship of iconic cellist Jan Vogler, a voice emerges, unfolding in Bach’s first cello suite, before Ravel brings violin and cello into a vivid exchange of tension and discovery. The journey returns to Bach with his sixth suite: the original solitary voice transformed by everything that has come before. Completing the encounter, both violin and cello come together at the end in the exuberant union of Handel–Halvorsen’s Passacaglia.