All the performers here have made fine recordings in the past, but it's a bit hard to decide what they were trying to do with this one. Begin with the unusual instrumentation: the continuo part in these pieces is played by a piano alone. The booklet notes assert that this is an "interpretive trend, now well established, that considers this instrument particularly suited to further illuminate the musical language of the genius from Eisenach." But it's well established only in the sense that Bach's chamber pieces were played this way 75 years ago. Certainly a fresh reading of Bach's chamber music using a piano would be a desirable thing, but the piano here functions as a kind of ersatz harpsichord, and the sense of bass motion in the music isn't well delineated. The booklet is on shaky ground in several respects. The Trio Sonata in G major, BWV 1039, exists in an alternate version for viola da gamba and harpsichord, not "bass viol and a bass," and the argument in the notes that anything with three distinct lines is a kind of de facto trio sonata, even the sonatas for violin and harpsichord, is dubious; what such music shows is that Bach was ingenious in combining contrapuntal language with the style of the solo sonata tradition. The BWV 1032 sonata on this disc, originally a work for flute and harpsichord, is here arranged rather uncomfortably for a trio of instruments. Murky church sound tends to swallow up the musical details that are still intact by this point. A better choice for the listener interested in these pieces would be that by
Florilegium on the Dutch Channel Classics label.