Alisa Weilerstein turned to Bach’s Cello Suites, the high point of her instrument’s solo repertory, for Sunday’s matinee and evening Wigmore concerts. As one might expect, she gave us performances of considerable directness and insight, in which technical prowess and depth of feeling went hand in hand. The music sang and danced, as it should: whatever else they may be, the Suites are, after all, effectively collections of dances. Weilerstein, however, also probed their meaning with great intensity and eloquence.
Much of her interpretation focused on the cycle’s wide emotional range, the patterns of contrast and detail – both between and within suites – that offset their formal perfection and give the overriding sense of diversity within a coherent unity, an impression reinforced, perhaps, by our hearing them in two groups of three.
