I had actually never listened to the second cello suite until last year, when this movement showed up in Dr. Ruth’s class on music and cinema. This movement was used in Ingmar Bergman’s film, Through a Glass Darkly, and it was the only source of music in the entire film, only played a handful of times. I was so moved by, not just the music, but the movie itself. It conveyed such a sense of hopelessness, despair and isolation. After watching the film, I knew I wanted to play the piece myself. I struggled for a while to figure out how I wanted to approach this movement, as it sounds particularly different with the decay of the marimba vs. the sustain you can achieve on the cello. Eventually, I ended up deciding that I really want to play into the natural decay of the instrument and let the silence that it creates be a part of the movement as well.

For RS, RB, LB, MF, CC, CP, AT, and KV