Bach, J S: Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV1008

"…it's the playing that makes these three sonatas really come alive. Anne Gastinel is one of the finest French cellists around, and she's a superb chamber music player, as you'll know if you've heard her Naïve recording of Rachmaninov and Strauss Sonatas with Pierre-Laurent Aimard." Andrew Mcgregor, BBC Radio 3, on Anne Gastinel’s recording Beethoven Cello Sonatas (V4297)

“With an easy technique and a mellow yet focused sound, she dances to the Allemandes, scampers through the Courantes and oozes character in the "galanterie" movements. Above all she plays with a singing tone that reaches its apogee in the Sarabandes, most notably those of the Fourth and Sixth suites which for sheer sustained sweet lyricism are among the most beautiful I have heard. ” Gramophone Magazine, June 2008

"A recording of all six of Bach's suites by the choice young cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras is in the offing from the Harmonia Mundi label, so it was particularly opportune to have a foretaste of his approach in this lunchtime recital... Queyras's playing has a magnetic quality and a spectrum of nuances that, in these solo circumstances, generated interpretations of great subtlety, sensibility and radiance... There was perhaps no more perfect antidote to the Bank Holiday tumult of Oxford Street than Queyras's Bach suite. …There was no hint of ostentation or overstatement in any of this, but only an affecting naturalness from a musician who has clearly thought deeply about the music and the emotional range it conveys." The Times, live review

“Queyras is master of his instrument. Intonation is well-nigh impeccable, including meeting Bach's demands of a five-string cello on a normal four-strong instrument… He's an exciting player. He sustains harmonic bass-notes though, most notably in the first Prelude where the superb acoustic of a church in Sulzberg in southern Germany allows the harmony to build up dramatically.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2008 *****

“A completely new and inspiring benchmark for this unique tour de force” BBC Music Magazine, 1st June 2007

“the stuff of legend” The Independent (on Steven Isserlis)