19 CÉDRIC PESCIA Do you remember your first encounter with these suites and your emotions when discovering them? They came into my life when I was about twelve or thirteen years old and they immediately intrigued me. More compact than the Partiten (Partitas) or the Englischen Suiten (English Suites), and with repeats in every piece, they offered a wonderful playground for developing my creativity. Thus, at a very young age, I became aware of the importance of never repeating oneself, but of casting new light on each musical phrase when it is repeated. All the more so as these works, with their pedagogical purpose, are among Bach’s most touching. Less demanding technically and less complex in their intellectual construction than his other great cycles, the French Suites encourage us to cultivate a kind of modesty in our playing and to forget all display. It is music of intimacy, in which, as performers, we must give a great deal of ourselves. And in this corpus are gathered the composer’s essential pedagogical aims: to prepare the fingers, the mind, and the heart.
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