The booklet notes by
Ton Koopman, who produced this release, issued it on his Antoine Marchand (that's French for "
Ton Koopman") imprint, and featured on keyboard his wife,
Tini Mathot, speak of "an effort to recover some of the lost chamber music of the Leipzig cantor,"
Johann Sebastian Bach. It's indeed likely that
Bach wrote a lot of chamber music that has since been lost, but this arrangement of
Bach's organ trio sonatas is really something other than a pure attempt at transcription. There are quite a few arrangements of these trio sonatas for chamber ensemble; naturally enough, for
Bach was himself imitating a chamber genre on the keyboard in this set of works. The majority of such arrangements, however, use the typical trio sonata grouping of two melody instruments (often two violins, or violin and flute). This one, along with various others, uses one melody instrument plus keyboard, with the right hand of the keyboard part serving as a partner to the melody instrument rather than to its own left hand, something in itself fairly typical of
Bach's contrapuntal thinking. Where recorder player
Reine-Marie Verhagen and
Mathot break new ground is in the use of an organ in three of the six sonatas; the other three are played on a recorder and harpsichord. This complicates the range of possibilities still more, for a listener in
Bach's time would have perceived a kinship between the sound of the recorder and that of the organ. Even now, the right hand of the organ enters the listener's consciousness as a second wind instrument, and the original trio sonata texture of the music is emphasized -- more so than in the pieces played on a harpsichord. The problem with calling this a "recovery" of
Bach chamber music is that the recorder-organ combination was a rare one in
Bach's time. But as a speculative endeavor intended to explore how the ear follows counterpoint and texture in
Bach's music, it's fascinating. The players are terrific: lively, clear, and crisp. And they're aided by instruments that seem tailor-made for the recording; the little chamber organ by Marc Garnier is especially notable. A standout among recordings of these sonatas by a chamber grouping, even if it's not exactly what it claims to be.