Colin Carr -- National Gallery -- February 22 *** When handled masterfully the cello has an intense, soulful voice -- as perfect for an intimate setting as two lovers gazing into each others' eyes.

And veteran soloist Colin Carr could not have put more heart into his stunning performance last night in the snug setting of the National Gallery.

It was as brilliant and sparkling as a diamond and surely the most dazzling of jewels in the crown of the 1999 Bermuda Festival.

He made music which seemed to become part of the audience's collective breath from the quietest, baleful, most gentle phrase to the triumph and glory of the exhilarating overriding theme.

Carr made his intentions clear from the start with a reminder that music was supposed to be fun not dour as traditionalists would have us believe.

His 1730 Matteo Gofriller cello sang perfectly.

Right from the 42-bar prelude to Bach's Suite No. 1 in G major his gleeful abandonment wove a line of simple-minded joy, of dancing and skipping about.

That contrasted with the main piece of the night, Bach's Suite No. 6. in D Major which from its 200-bar prelude had a complexity that enabled Carr to achieve soaring emotional highs. The chords of that piece -- originally scored for a five-stringed cello which Bach had dabbled with -- were amazingly rich on the four-stringed instrument and contributed to the triumphant upbeat feel.

The piece observed the standard form of the era's suite from the dreamy allemande, the triple-time courante and the taunting sarabande -- which Carr described as the centrepiece.

In the 6th suite a pair of swinging gavottes extended the challenge even further before the glorious frenzied gigue after which the audience could no longer contain its spontaneous and prolonged applause.

The mystery of both suites was made all the more grand by the fact that these technically amazing compositions seemed to contain such a large injection of Carr's own lively and spirited interpretation.

Amazingly the modern world came very close to never hearing these magical pieces but, luckily for the audience last night, fate intervened.

Like other musicians of his day Bach wrote music to perform rather than to be preserved forever so his original manuscripts of these suites were lost.

His young second wife lovingly penned copies which were rescued from the wrapping paper stocks of a grocery store and published as technical exercises more than a century after they were first composed.

Another 50 years passed before a boy aged 12 found the pieces in a shop, recognised their rich mystery and practised them for ten years before launching them for the public to at last see their magnificence.

But it was Carr's insistence on "experimenting'' for the audience in performing 20th century composer George Crumb's Sonata for Cello and three of Alfredo Carlo Piatti's caprices which won my heart.

It had an improvisational character from the guitar-like strumming to the cello's plaintive teasing sighs which gave it an abstract and frolicky feel compounded by the final movement being packed full of rapid figurations.

Deidre Stark