Starker (Mercury) and Wispelwey (Channel Classics) and Bachs cello suites

Among the several recordings of this music I own, I like Starker's best.. I purchased Wispelwey's anticipating a complimentary baroque cello version. I don't really understand what Wispelwey is doing with these. The guy who played Kodaly's sonata the way he did is surely capable of invigorating these suites. Yet he plays them as if they were Czerny etudes. Why did he play them that way?

I guess I should add that the Wispelwey set I purchased are the 1998 recordings. It has been suggested that this is the wrong set. But - but it was cheaper!

I have no idea why Wispelwey plays the suites the way he does; all I know is that I dislike the results with every fiber of my being. His decidedly lightweight, relaxed, and conversational treatment of the suites goes against my grain to begin with, but his refusal to play even the most innocent phrase without subjecting it to some pseudo-expressive temporal surge and dynamic bulge really gets on my nerves. Aside from being annoying in their own right, these affectations thwart momentum, kill tension, disrupt continuity, and make the music sound like a loose confederation of individual phrases. There is no sense of sweep or spontaneity here, only indulgent rhetoric.

I've tried hard to find the goodness in these recordings, as they are favorites of many thoughtful listeners here at r.m.c.r., but I am simply unable to understand their appeal.

J. R. Robinson Denver, Colorado