Accuracy vs Precision (or) My Creative License is Expired

I don't usually listen to recordings of the Bach cello suites. I think mostly it's because of that thing that cellists say, "the only recording of Bach that you'll like is your own." The fact that these are among the few pieces that everybody plays means that they have been both the beneficiaries and the victims of changing attitudes toward performance over the years. And even within any one era or aesthetic, the interpretive possibilities are endless. Add to that the fact that there is no score in Bach's own hand, and suddenly all compositional authority is also thrown into question by Anna Magdalena's sloppy slurring. The net result of all this is that the cellist is left very much to his or her own devices when approaching this music. Teachers and pedagogical traditions weigh in, personal taste and maturity weigh in. and in the end, everybody comes up with something slightly different than everyone else who has ever played a suite. Clearly, this is part of their beauty, for who can fault music that can stand up to such abuse and inspiration and remain fundamentally unchanged? For us cellists, this flexibility can often seem to be more of a curse, for reasons that should be readily apparent. Especially after one is "out in the world," by which I essentially mean having studied with more than one teacher, it becomes expected that everyone of us becomes a specialist in source study. Many of us dutifully and with varying degrees of interest and dedication, gather up our Barenreiter Urtext edition with sources A-E and hop to. Some cellists just give up and do what they feel like, which is in many ways even more historically informed than poring over manuscripts. However we go about it, we do our best with bowings, articulations, dynamics, all the vitals of interpretation. The only thing we aren't allowed to change are the notes themselves. At least in the suites, to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any places where we can say "Bach didn't actually mean that note, he meant this one" as occasionally happens in cantatas and the like. So I was alarmed today when, upon listening to three different recordings of the suite I am currently working on, all of those recordings were in agreement about notes that I was certain were not what I was playing. Running to my Barenreiter upon returning home, I was shocked and displeased to discover that it was NOT in fact I who had made the discovery that all these venerable cellists had missed, but rather that I have just learned at least five wrong notes in the sixth suite. There are an awful lot of notes in it, but sadly I am not allowed to claim this as an excuse. Having found not one but five different things I have learned wrong, I am faced with the task tomorrow of going through note by note and discovering for myself what, if any, other mistakes I may have learned. I believe that relearning music one has already conquered wrong is harder than conquering it in the first place, although that may just be me. It suffices to say that this should serve as a warning to any musicians reading this that it pays to be sure that the notes you are playing are actually what are on the page to begin with. Either that or maintain your blissful ignorance and never listen to any recordings.