The Danish harpsichordist Lars-Ulrik Mortensen makes his recorded (UK) debut as a soloist in this all-Bach programme, well tailored to give full-value-for-money playing time. First a word of caution: begin by turning your volume control one or two notches back, this saves you from being deluged by sheer weight of sound—but it cannot abate the reverberation. The sounds linger on even at the ends of long rhetorical pauses, suggestive of an organist treating the acoustic of a church as a part of his instrument. All this invests the harpsichord with an aura of power that is both uncharacteristic and unnecessary—the real power is in the performances themselves and they need no extraneous reinforcement. What is overlaid by this 'sonic boom' is some uncommonly fine stimulating playing.
The Philips LP recording of Blandine Verlet having been deleted, there is no integral set of the Toccatas, BWV810-916 and Mortensen's group of four is the nearest you can get to it. These works of Bach's youth may not be among his greatest or most even in quality but when played as they are here, with exuberant conviction and a modicum of added embellishment, they sound fresh and enjoyable. The Variations BWV989 are no match for their Goldberg equivalents but, here further 'variata' by Mortensen himself they do not deserve the neglect they have suffered; Bach wore his Italian hat stylishly.
Mortensen was a student of Trevor Pinnock from whom he may have learned much of the art of flexible phrasing—the slightest prolongation or variation of touch is telling, and his account of BWV903, though less urgent, is no less exciting and his passage work no less dazzling than Pinnock's (Archiv Produktion 413 638-2AH3 4/85—part of a three disc set). Quite simply, this is a record that carries one on the flood-tide of its joyous musicality and corruscating technical accomplishment. With the volume turned back the inflated recording of the sonorous copy of a Christian Zell instrument of 1728 becomes enjoyable, if not always true to life.'