It seems a bit naughty of Virgin not to make it clearer to potential buyers that the Bach violin concertos here are not the famous ones, but no one taking this disc home and finding something they were not expecting should be disappointed for long. The Violin and Oboe Concerto is one of Bach's more familiar orchestral works, of course, and the fact that it is a modern speculative reconstruction from a concerto for two harpsichords is taken by Europa Galante as the starting point for a pleasingly mixed programme of further transcriptions - two violin concertos adapted from the F minor and D minor Harpsichord Concertos respectively, and Bach's own adaptation of his E major Violin Concerto to make a Harpsichord Concerto in D. Such reconstructions are not in themselves new ideas of course but to combine these four on one disc is refreshingly novel.
A similar imaginative sense informs the performances. Fabio Biondi is certainly not a member of the non-interventionist school of baroque directors, and his readings of all four concertos here abound with interesting ideas and surprises of detail - and this in music whose robustness does not easily admit such things. Sometimes, it is true, one gets the feeling that he is trying too hard: the diminuendo endings to all but one of the quick movements are the sort of thing which is nice once or twice, but not every time; the fermatas and cadenzas in the D minor could almost have been designed to get on your nerves on repeated listenings; and some of the articulation seems over-fussy. But against that, Biondi's own violin playing has a technical security and tonal richness (generous vibrato, but never too much) that few other baroque violinists can match. The other two soloists both have safe pairs of hands, though the harpsichord predictably struggles to be heard against an unreduced string band.
Overall, a stimulating release which leaves one looking forward to hearing Biondi (as I am sure we will) in Bach's E major, A minor and D minor Double Concertos.'