Best Vinyl Bach - Solo Cello Suites recording?

If you want a heartfelt power performance, Rostropovich on EMI is unbeatable .
If. like me, you want an elegant performance, Fournier's is the most profound . DG 449711-2. remastered to better sound than is normal for DG.

I never heard a bad recording of these masterpieces .

I have only heard two players of note play the cello suites
live.
One was Rostopovich, the other Anner Bylsma who is the towering figure of historically informed music on the cello and a musician declared a national treasure by the Dutch.
Can't say one was better than the other. I thought Rostopovich made the music sing, Byslsma made it dance.
If you want a CD, Bylsma made a recording of it using a borrowed strad which is most wonderful and the one I listen to over and over.

I hope you got the latter of his two recordings , 1992 I think, where he plays the famous strad from the Smithsonian
Collection, just for the sound.
But Bylsma's earlier SEON recording now on Sony is fine as well.

I believe the original instrument crowd thinking this music should be played on the instruments it was written for are spot on. Bach wrote for the Lord of the Dance.
The Cantatas are the heart and soul of Bach, they were written to aid the prayers of devout believers not as the
mini-operas being recorded today.
Most illuminating are the one voice to a part series by Sigiswald Kuijken's "Le Petite Band" which sound just like what they are, simple Christians at prayer.
When Bach signed every work "To the Glory of God" that is exactly what he meant.

IMO original instruments give Bach what is needed, less precision and more mystery .Even more called for in vocals.

I am religious, but was not when I first heard the Cantatas
and Passions, but being Christian has brought new depth , to me at least.
Masaaki Suzuki. whose operatic style series on BIS has been
widely lauded, says you don't have to be Christian to understand Bach, that's as may be, but it sure doesn't hurt.

Nadric, I have the Schiff too , never saw it on vinyl.
Good performance, but EMI overdid the reverb IMO.

Dougdeacon, you should start a thread just for the original
instrument set to recommend recordings, artists etc-like endless "jazz for aficinoados" one, only more civil : .}

Speaking of Bach , I just got the Roy Goodman/Brandenburg Consort set of the Brandenburg Cnts. on Hyperion .
Been holding off as I thought the half-dozen I had was sufficient, but everything I hear from Goodman is so lively,
creative and well done I just couldn't resist.

If I had to have only one set of Brandenburgs this would be it. The performances are spell-binding AND the sound is superb. I believe the 6th has the best sound I ever heard on a CD !