The Anner Bylsmer Collection

4 box sets available in this series:
Anner Bylsma plays Cello Suites and Sonatas
Anner Bylsma plays Concertos and Ensemble Works
Anner Bylsma plays Chamber Music Vol. 1
Anner Bylsma plays Chamber Music Vol. 2

Sony Classical celebrates the 80th birthday of distinguished Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma with a special survey of his finest recordings, many originally issued on Sony’s legendary period-music label Vivarte, and now re-released as four individually boxed sets.

Born in The Hague in 1934, Bylsma won First Prize in the 1959 Pablo Casals Competition in Mexico and served as Principal Cellist in Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1962 to 1968, before becoming better known as one of the leading pioneers in the period-instrument revival of the Sixties and Seventies.

A close collaborator of such fellow “Dutch Baroque School” members as Frans Brüggen and the late Gustav Leonhardt, he co-founded the period-instrument chamber ensemble L’Archibudelli with his wife, the violinist Vera Beths, and in 1979 famously made the first ever period-instrument recording of Bach’s six unaccompanied Cello Suites.

While Bylsma has won fame for his historically informed interpretations of the major Baroque and early Classical masterpieces, he is no adherent of dry authenticity, preferring instead to pursue the ideal of ‘musical truth’. As he says: “It’s more of a feeling that you must be playing the way the piece was meant to be played. If it is meant honestly and comes from the heart, then it rings true and gives pleasure.”