No one who enjoyed Pletnev's two-disc set of Scarlatti (Virgin Classics, 3/96) will be surprised that he has now turned his attention to CPE Bach, whose keyboard music is so important in the transition from the High Baroque to Classical style. Nor is there any need for eyebrow-raising over his use of a modern piano; if anything it is the harpsichords used by Gabor Antalffy in his four-disc set that sound anachronistic, since it is clear from Bach's notation and from contemporary reports of his playing that he placed a premium on flexibility of tone. In any case, Antalffy's manner tends to be unyielding (as Nicholas Anderson noted in his review). Pletnev comfortably surpasses him in taste, intelligence and virtuosity. There is surprisingly little other competition in this repertoire.

Where I have been able to compare his performances with published facsimiles of the manuscripts it is clear that Pletnev has felt free to go his own way with ornamentation and, occasionally, with rhythm. But he almost always does so in the spirit of the composer, whose own performing manner was renowned for its combined raptness and clarity. Arguably the Andante con tenerazza from the A major Sonata, included as a kind of encore, here acquires a fatalistic tone more like an Adagio funebre. But overall I cannot but admire Pletnev’s tasteful rhetoric, his eloquent declamatory flourishes, his pliancy in the Rondos, and his rhythmic alertness and caprice in fast movements, always allied to the classiest of fingerwork and the most refined colouristic sense.

Given its historical significance (which extends as far as anticipations of Brahms – compare the first track with the finale of Brahms’s First Cello Sonata), CPE Bach’s keyboard music is remarkably poorly served on CD at present. All the more reason to welcome this superbly executed disc. Recording quality is clean but not clinical, with the piano close but not oppressively so, and always natural-sounding.