Angela East’s Bach Cello Suites have been a long time in the pipeline. They were actually recorded in 2001 and 2004 but a saga of misfortunes means that it is only now that they are with us. East is probably most familiar as a member of Red Priest, and if these performances do not quite shout with those Baroque wildboys’ over-the-top irreverence, they share something of their boldness. Certainly in the largely serious world of Bach Suite interpretation they offer a fresh view in which emotion and sense of fun have as much a part to play as the cerebral and the thought-out.

East’s approach makes it hard to identify an overall aesthetic, other than to say that she treats each separate movement pragmatically. One could say that in general she favours strongly shaped movements in which climactic moments are marked by dynamics and rubato, and that robustly carved articulation is a major part of her armoury. But it would take more words than I have been allotted to convey the variety of her ideas: the high-stepping First Courante, with attendant heavy landings; the aggressively attacked First Gigue, dramatically pausing just before the end; the gaunt mezza voce of the Fifth Sarabande; the plaintive yearning of the Second Prelude; the subdued opening and the stop-starts of the Sixth Prelude; the increasingly drawn-out double-stop passages in the Third Gigue – I could go on. Perhaps it is unlikely that you will relish them all but some will surely make you smile in admiration. I should add that her cello has lusty good tone, and that the five-string instrument used for the Sixth Suite offers unusually stress-free top notes. Karine Georgian’s Bach Suites make quite a contrast. With long, free-flowing lines and consistent fine tone (recorded in a silvery church acoustic), they are as easy on the ear as East’s are attention-grabbing. There is far less variety here, fewer clever ideas, but cello-playing at this level of natural elegance and love of life will always make the music sound great. Georgian tries in her booklet interview to distance herself from the Romanticism of the Russian school (she is a Rostropovich student) but the gloriously intense singing of the Sarabandes rather gives her away. There is a bonus in the Gamba Sonatas but the cello and harpsichord are not an ideal sonic match on this occasion, and the performances feel somehow less engaged. The Suites are joy enough.