More than three centuries after their composition, Johann Sebastian Bach's six suites remain at the center of the cello repertoire. Their extraordinary range of expression, achieved with a single instrument, continues to shape the ways composers and performers imagine the possibilities of the cello.

Bach and the Modern places these works in conversation with music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. György Ligeti's Sonata for Solo Cello moves between intimate dialogue and restless virtuosity, revealing a musical language at once deeply personal and strikingly inventive.

The second half brings Bach's Fifth Suite into conversation with Joseph Kuipers's To L. Cohen and Giovanni Sollima's Lamentatio. Moving between introspection, the human voice, and the expressive freedom of contemporary composition, these works explore different possibilities of musical storytelling.

Although separated by centuries, these composers share a fascination with the expressive possibilities of a single instrument. Moving between tradition and invention, familiar forms and unexpected voices, the recital invites listeners to hear the cello from fresh perspectives.