What with the recent death of Mstislav Rostropovich and the launch this week of the RNCM Manchester International Cello Festival, the cello is currently hard to avoid. But who in any case would want to avoid an instrument that can “speed-dial a direct line to our souls”, as Richard Morrison phrased it in this newspaper a week ago?

That link to our innermost being is especially speedy when the cello plays Bach’s set of solo suites. For the dedicated cellist, those six pieces stand on the horizon like Everest. They demand to be conquered, but conquered at the appropriate time.

Steven Isserlis began learning the first suite some 35 years ago; only now, in his late forties, is he setting down performances of them on CD. And some might think that even that is too early.

It’s not. Isserlis is a passionate musician, but never thoughtless or frivolous, and the delicacy of his responses on this wonderful set sometimes take the breath away. If your soul fails to quiver in the quiet depths of the fifth suite’s sarabande, then you must be a robot in disguise.

Yet he’s not on his knees always worshipping: time and again Isserlis asserts the music’s dance roots, whether through his thrusting accents or by sweeping through with a winning lilt.

The recording is wonderfully full-bodied, and technically Isserlis is almost always spot-on. I mention one spot-off – suspect intonation in the fifth suite’s gigue – just to prove that the man’s only human.

Isserlis brings to the music more than musical understanding: he also comes with a private notion of what the suites in aggregate might mean. “This is a feeling, not a theory,” he writes in the booklet. Then he tentatively outlines a sacred Christian narrative, taking us from Christ’s Nativity through the Crucifixion (the fifth suite, with its aching sarabande) to the final joyful Resurrection. How does this markedly Catholic scheme fit the mind of the Lutheran Bach? With some difficulty. Even so, in specific moments Isserlis’s plot certainly suits the music’s expressive content.

And if you don’t wish to hold this interpretation in your hand, you don’t need to. Just listen to Isserlis, Bach and your heart, and the music that never dies.

(Hyperion)

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010