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Start giftingThe Cello Suites
J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
Narrator
David de Vries
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Length
8 hours 10 minutes
Language
English
One fateful evening, journalist Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites and began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of intrigue, politics, and passion. Winner of the Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction and the McAuslan First Book Prize, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the disappearance of Bach's manuscript in the eighteenth century; Pablo Casals's discovery and popularization of the music in Spain in the late-nineteenth century; and Siblin's infatuation with the suites in the present day. The search led Siblin to Barcelona, where Casals, just thirteen and in possession of his first cello, roamed the backstreets with his father in search of sheet music and found Bach's lost suites tucked in a dark corner of a store. Casals played them every day for twelve years before finally performing them in public.
Siblin pursues the mysteries that continue to haunt this music more than 250 years after its composer's death: Why did Bach compose the suites for the cello, then considered a lowly instrument? What happened to the original manuscript? A seamless blend of biography and music history, The Cello Suites is a true-life journey of discovery, fueled by the power of these musical masterpieces.
Eric Siblin is a writer with interests in history, music, hockey, and olive oil. Educated at Concordia University in Montreal, he has worked as a staff reporter for The Canadian Press and the Montreal Gazette. His first book, The Cello Suites, explores the multi-layered story of an epic composition by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Cello Suites was a number one national bestseller in Canada and named an Economist Book of the Year for 2010. It won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, and the McAuslan First Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, the Writers' Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize, and British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. It has been translated into nine languages. Studio Grace, published in 2015 to coincide with an album of the same name, is his second book.
David de Vries can be seen in a number of feature films, including The Founder, The Accountant, Captain America: Civil War, and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. On television, his credits include House of Cards, Nashville, Halt and Catch Fire, the National Geographic film Killing Reagan, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for HBO. As a veteran stage actor, David appeared as Lumiere in Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, as Dr. Dillamond in the Los Angeles and Chicago companies of Wicked, and in hundreds of shows in regional theaters throughout the country. He is an Audie and Odyssey Award-winning narrator for his performance in Pam Munoz Ryan's Echo and has voiced over 100 titles in every genre, including his Audie Award-nominated performance of the 2011 Caldecott winner A Sick Day for Amos McGee.
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