Atlanta Audio Club, June 2024

Argentine native Tomás Cotik adds to his reputation as one of the supreme masters of the bow in this new release of J. S. Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello senza Basso... With no disrespect to the original version which many generations of cellists have explored with greatest reverence and devotion, Cotik’s violin arrangements may well add further insight into the heart and mind of their creator…In any insightful modern performance, the artist should be keenly aware of their implications for mood and nuance as well as tempo, as Tomás Cotik clearly is in his accounts of all these suites. Cotik realizes that Bach’s six suites are not cut from the same piece of cloth and are not cookie-cutters in any sense of the word. There is immense variety here, as he is well aware…Considering these facts, Cotik’s wizardry of the bow is essential to the success of his Bach performances. It is just as evident in his articulations, choice of dynamics, and use of ornamentation – all essential elements of Bach interpretation – as they were in his earlier exploration of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin, which I discussed with great pleasure in my March 2020 Reviews.

The recordings made in 2021 at Portland State University in Oregon, where Cotik is currently Associate Professor of Violin, are first-rate, adding to the appeal of an album that sounds great upon repeated auditions and is hard to resist.