Tanya Tomkins

   When legendary cellist Pablo Casals discovered Bach's Unaccompanied Cello suites in a dusty Barcelona, Spain, music store in the 1920s, the suites had existed in relative obscurity for centuries.
   Casals studied these works for two decades before performing them. Bach's suites became one of the recitalist's calling card, and his success with them allowed them to enter the cello repertoire. Today, it's hard to imagine how such seemingly perfect music, whose charms live outside place and time, tempted oblivion for so long.
   For every cellist, the Bach suites loom as a technical and emotional challenge – and as a joy to play. And for audiences, the suites, played well, bring an electric feeling of musical discovery.
   On Sunday afternoon at the Crocker Concert series at California State University, Sacramento's Capistrano Hall, cellist Tanya Tomkins offered a forum for musical discovery. She did so using a 1798 Lockey Hill baroque cello and a steely confidence. Both served to shed much light on Bach Cello Suites Nos. 1, 4 and 5.
   On the smaller baroque cello, with its lighter bow and half-stop lower tuning, certain avenues are open to the cellist. The focus moves away from the full vibrato and churchlike sustain of the modern cello toward finely etched musical effects.
   With Bach's cello suites, whose complexity increases with each successive piece, the early music approach can prove a potent and precise weapon of musical communication.
   Tomkins proved the baroque cello is worthy of delivering many shadings on Cello Suite No. 5, with all the florid French inspiration Bach wrote into the suite. On the prelude, Tomkins played with heartfelt expression. She imparted a tight range of darkly shaded colors to the movement. These were also given with an eye toward musical spontaneity.
   This was a contrast to Cello Suite No. 1, which opened the concert, wherein Tomkins played the prelude at a fast and less-than-weighty clip. However, her playing grew more colorful and confident in the five movements that followed.
   The greatest statement Tomkins made was on the technically demanding Cello Suite No. 4. A potent and clear approach defined the playing on the tricky prelude. Tomkins made good use of the baroque cello's platform for delivering finely rendered phrases. A facility for communication marked the dark and majestic Sarabande, where the tone was large, with notes and chords powerfully delivered. But this was never an exercise in a potent sound being delivered at the expense of clarity.
   With Tomkins, one gets the sense that she feels the music. But one also gets the feeling she's brought her mind to bear on it. And that combination is deeply suitable to the Bach suites, whose greatest charms are given when this music makes the listener feel as if it were being heard for the first time.