J. S. Bach - Sarabande for Solo Cello Alfia Nakipbekova

RECORDING CELLO SUITES IN PAPAY
We set off from London in November 2007. We faced a two and a half day grueling journey - first by crowded train to Aberdeen, an 8 eight hour ferry crossing in a force 8 wind, another ferry from Kirkwall to Westray and finally a small fishing boat that would take us to our final destination - Papa Westray (a small island off the most northern tip of Orkney inhabited by 70 people, a few cows and several hundred sheep). Luckily by the time we left Westray the wind had dropped so the crossing was fairly mild but there was heavy cloud cover and the boat man had to rely on, what looked like, an antiquated radar system to get us through the pitch black darkness. Having seen the broken skeleton of a vessel that had recently run aground on the rocks of Papay, it was a relief to see Ivanov and Chan waiting for us on the pier.

The next day we went to visit St Boniface where we would record 3 of the Bach suites. It is a small 12 century church on the North side of the island near the sea. The building has recently been restored but there is no electricity or heating and even when the doors and windows were firmly shut, I could still hear the wind howling and the sea splashing against the rocks. This would be a problem. We borrowed a generator from a kind farmer and local residents leant us their portable gas fires. After dragging the generator through muddy fields with rain blowing horizontally into our faces by a 50 mph hour wind, I started to set up the recording equipment. Through the headphones I could hear the low frequency sounds of the wind and the sea rumbling against the diaphragms of the sensitive microphones. We had no alternative but to wait for a break in the weather which finally happened in the afternoon. Some days it was quiet and we managed to record quite a lot of material, but there were times when the wind was so fierce it became impossible to work and we had to retreat to Ivanov and Chan's studio on the other side of the Island where we would warm ourselves with hot tea and a a few wee drams of the local brew. After 7 days of work (most of which was downtime) with the help and encouragement from Ivanov, Chan and the people of Papay we completed the first half of the cycle. A year later we returned to Papay to continue recording. Again, the weather was stormy, but this time there was no respite from the wind so we had to make the difficult decision to record some of the suites in Ivanov and Chan's studio - hence the non - chronological order of the music.

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