The distinguished Lithuanian-born cellist and conductor David Geringas performs an unusually broad repertoire, from early baroque to contemporary music - a testimony to his flexibility and curiosity. The Rostropovich student and winner of the First Prize and Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition (1970) can now look back on a century-spanning career, and with it on decades of special engagement with Bach’s Six Suites for solo cello.

Geringas has been dedicated throughout his life to the development, performance and discovery of new music. From this came the idea to combine Bach’s Cello Suites with short works by contemporary composers as "set pieces, links, separators or intermediaries". With most of these brief contemporary pieces there is only a partial direct relationship through some of the composers’ use of fragments of Bach; more often the links are via atmosphere, internalisation, key or character.

As well as David Geringas’ choice of more commonly-played works by Pablo Casals (his celebrated Song of the Birds), Sofia Gubaidulina, Ernst Krenek, Victor Suslin and Peteris Vasks, there are also new and, in part, previously unrecorded pieces by John Corigliano and Geringas himself.

As an introduction to the Fifth Bach Suite - and specially composed for this 2-CD set - is the interlude by Anatolijus Senderovas, who has been a close friend of the cellist since childhood.