I have an old excellent recording of the Bach cello suites on cello. However, I have recently been revisiting these on the viola and realise that I do not have a recording of a viola version. Can anyone recommend a good one please?

Obviously, I'm against this on principle...

...however, I love Robin Ireland's recording of some Bach cello suites and some Bach violin partitas - his recording of the Chaconne in D is so wonderful that I don't think I want to listen to it on the violin again!

I like Nobuko Imai's recording. Even though I'm a cellist manqué and only settled on the viola for practical reasons, I tend to prefer these pieces played on the viola.

I couldn't really see any of the recordings available being naff! You could do an Amazon search for 'cello suites viola' and see what that leads to. I have the Barbara Westphal one.




No-one will ever know for sure if Bach really did write these for cello, esp given that he himself was a violist and, unlike some cello music that goes so high that it couldn't be realistically transcribed for viola, these fit both fine. So, who really knows??