The Franco-American cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton has always sought to make music a language

open to the world. A prizewinner in the Rostropovich Competition at the age of twenty-five, she is the

interpreter of choice for many contemporary composers, among them Pascal Dusapin and Wolfgang

Rihm, while the voice of her cello also encounters the voices of actresses such as Fanny Ardant and

Charlotte Rampling, as well as the film director Chantal Akerman. Sonia Wieder-Atherton has now

signed an editorial partnership with Alpha Classics which starts out with a recording of Bach’s Cello

Suites, inaugurated by the Suites nos.1 and 2 presented here. This volume and the two others that

will follow (Suites 3 to 6) feature photos by the great Sarah Moon:

For me, playing Bach's Suites is always at some point or another seeing the image of Giacometti's

hands tirelessly moulding clay until a face appears. (...) To get to grips with the Bach Suites is an

experience very close to that. It’s a question of digging into the string until the phrase is born, as well

as the right way to breathe it. (...) And then came the encounter with Sarah Moon. When my desire to

record the Bach Suites was born I dreamt of her images. Because, when I look at them, I imagine the

creation of the world, the separation of the waters, the appearance of the earth, before history begins.

Sonia Wieder-Atherton