This is the fourth new recording of the Bach gamba sonatas to have come my way in the year 2000 – proof, no doubt, of the deserved popularity of these finely wrought, tuneful and attractively varied pieces. Indeed, if one had to choose just one CD to represent Bach’s instrumental chamber music, then among the plethora of transcriptions and double albums there would perhaps be no better group of works to pick than these.
Jaap ter Linden and Richard Egarr enter a largish field which includes a number of modern cellists unable to resist this superb music, but they emerge as serious contenders for a placing. Linden is one of very few players to have recorded not only these works on the gamba but also Bach’s solo cello suites on a baroque cello, and his sound has the smoothness and rich lyricism that one tends to associate with the latter instrument, while at the same time retaining something of the gamba’s pleasing incisiveness of line. Richard Egarr’s harpsichord is splendidly sonorous, and while his tautly controlled playing is in many ways the opposite of Linden’s, the meeting of instruments and minds is nevertheless a happy one. Egarr, playing an obbligato part, has less opportunity to show off his individualism than he would in an improvised continuo accompaniment, but, even if he could have been favoured a little more in the balance, his ability to orchestrate an impressive range of sounds from his instrument is still in evidence, especially in the concerto-like Sonata in G minor. He also dispatches the disc’s filler items – two of Bach’s early, somewhat old-fashioned solo harpsichord pieces – with vigorous and virtuosic aplomb.
Compared with their recent rivals, then, these are lively performances which steer a comfortable middle course between those of the rich-toned but slightly unimaginative Markku Luolajan-Mikkola and Miklos Spanyi and the more intense and inspired but sloppily recorded Jordi Savall and Ton Koopman. Alison Crum and Laurence Cummings suffer too much from a balance unkind to the gamba. It all comes down to taste, of course, but this new recording may just be the one to live with.'