Yo-Yo Ma brings his interpretation of the J.S. Bach cello suites to Ruth Eckerd Hall

Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello suites of J.S. Bach is an event. Ma is probably the greatest cellist of his generation — he is certainly the most famous one — and the Bach suites are a pinnacle of classical music.

But they can be elusive. The six cello suites are the opposite of flashy, with a single musician performing, and their 18th century language is a long way from contemporary fashion. Or is it?

In advance of Ma's concert this week at Ruth Eckerd Hall, I spoke with Eric Siblin, a Canadian writer and filmmaker who brings the passion of a convert to Bach's cello suites. Siblin is a former pop music critic in Montreal who had a kind of epiphany when he first heard a performance of the suites nine years ago. His forthcoming book, The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece (Atlantic Monthly Press), traces the history of these works. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.

The first time you heard the cello suites was in a concert by Laurence Lesser in Toronto. What was your impression?

I loved it immediately. First of all, the scene was very dramatic. A somewhat elderly man in black formal wear, with a shock of white hair, entirely alone up there, playing what looked to be a pretty crude instrument to be conjuring up this complex cosmos of sound. So it gripped me right away musically. It was mesmerizing. It's lovely to hear it on a recording, of course, but to see it brings you that much closer to the sound world of the music and the genius of it all. The cello suites have a sort of exquisite minimalism, and that appealed to me as well.

There are something like 50 recordings of the Bach cello suites. How much do the interpretations differ?

Well, I haven't heard them all, but I have listened to a lot of them. I think it probably runs from Pablo Casals at one end, which would be called romantic, to the most faithful period approaches by people like Anner Bylsma, the Dutch cellist. Then along that spectrum you get different personalities who put their own stamp on it, like Pieter Wispelwey, another Dutch cellist, who brings something very personal and idiosyncratic to bear.

Yo-Yo Ma has recorded them twice — the tempos were a bit quicker the second time through — and for the second set, he produced six short films to illustrate the suites. They were called Inspired by Bach and include films on Kabuki, a garden, architecture and figure skating. Did you like those?

I think it was a brilliant idea. Some of the individual videos work better than others. I still recall Mark Morris' dance to Suite No. 3, with the dancers tumbling down a staircase to depict that beautiful, massive downward scale that begins the prelude of the suite.

Each of the suites has quite a distinct personality. I think that lends itself to using them as an artistic springboard. You certainly hear that in the performances of the suites. Cellists will think very hard about which one or two or three suites they'll play in a concert. What suites is Yo-Yo doing?

He's playing two, three and six.

Okay, that makes sense. He's got one of the minor-key suites, which is the second and is quite melancholic. Three will be a nice counterpoint to that because it is extremely effervescent and upbeat. He'll most likely end on six because it is a really transcendent, spectacular suite. The prelude is almost like an orchestra in a cello.

In human terms, there's evidence that Suite No. 2 was written as a kind of elegy for the death of Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara. Whether or not that's the case, you can certainly imagine it in the mournful prelude.

Suite No. 3 is extremely joyful. I've always been struck by the Gigue, which has this one gesture that sounds very rock 'n' roll and electric guitarish to me, coming about 20 seconds into the Gigue. And the prelude of six is just jaw-dropping in its technical prowess and how much music is going on.

Any advice for listeners who are musically curious but don't know anything about Bach?

For this concert, certainly the fact that this is one of the epic pieces of music in all of Western civilization should be a lure. For those who aren't well versed in classical music, it's a nice entry-level thing, a portal to get into the sound world of Bach. It's not as puzzling as, say, the Mass in B minor. It's easier to relate to. It's almost Zen-like in its simplicity. I think the music in its sparseness has a real meditative charm.

Compared to the larger-scale Bach works like the Passions, it's almost like a reduction of the great works brought down to a very simple scale. I think people who are interested in roots music, or the blues, will respond very well to the cello suites. It's Bach unplugged.

Can you think of an equivalent to the cello suites in rock?

Well, let's see, it would have to be a solo work for starters. I think of a musician like, say, Robert Johnson, a bluesman before the blues went electric. He made a recording in the 1930s around the same time Casals was making his great recordings of the suites. Johnson is using few materials, just one guitar and one voice, and he's working within prescribed structures, the 12-bar blues, yet he's doing amazing things with it. He's pushing it in ways it hadn't been pushed before. He's very like Bach in that sense.

John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716. He blogs on Critics Circle at blogs.tampabay.com/arts.