In the wake of their Four Seasons (RCA GL70220, 9/85) the Amsterdam Guitar Trio offer four Brandenburgs on three guitars. Predictably it is Nos. 3 and 6 (transposed into C major), those written for homogeneous string sound, which come off best. The instruments have a total range of less than four octaves, requiring a certain amount of compression, but the music survives its transmutation happily, except in the Adagio ma non tanto of No. 6, taken on the brisk side—despite which the sublime melody cries out for an instrument of longer sustain, as do the upper parts a few bars before the end. The final Allegro of No. 3 has a slower tempo than usual but the incisive sound of cleanly-played guitars makes it sound brisker than it is. The 55-second improvisation separating the two Allegros of No. 3 sounds somewhat out of place, a square peg in a round, conjectured hole. The Second Concerto lacks the variety of instrumental colour that highlights the concertino conversations and emerges the blander for it. Though the sounds of the harpsichord and guitars are appreciably different, the contrast is less than with plucked versus bowed strings; some passages in No. 5 emerge with less clarity than one might wish. A curiosity is the replacement of the familiar, extended harpsichord solo in the first movement by the shorter version Bach first wrote, showing how right he was to have second thoughts. After the AGT's last London concert, The Times described it as an ''enterprise zone'', an apt term but one that would be better emphasized by encouraging (or permitting) it to record some of the extensive, original and contemporary repertoire it offers in concert. Still, the excellence of the performances and the quality of the recording may well be matched by the volume of the sales.'