One of the nice things about a music festival is that there is time for some side shows away from the mainstream concerts – a chance for the artists to talk about the music and how they go about preparing a piece for performance.

For cellist and Bendigo Music Festival co-director Chris Howlett, J.S. Bach is “the pinnacle, the gold standard,” and he set about explaining why in an entertaining show-and-tell session examining the first of the six cello suites.

When Bach wrote the suites he was living in Cöthen with his second wife, Anna Magdalena, and their children. It was a time when the cello was emerging from the confines of the viola da gamba world in which it did little other than to mimic the left hand of the keyboard and provide some rhythm and a bass line.

Bach changed all that, and Anna Magdalena – a celebrated soprano in her time – was also a superb copyist, copying Bach’s scores and selling the results to boost the family income, as well as staging musical gatherings at the Bach home for family and friends.