Bach produced 16 solo harpsichord transcriptions of concertos by Italian and German composers during his formative Weimar period, all of which conveniently fit on two CDs, with room for the A minor Prelude and Fugue, BWV894. More importantly, Elizabeth Farr chooses harpsichord registrations that make the most of the music’s solo and ensemble textures. She usually does this by employing double stops in the outer movements’ tuttis and single stops for the solo passages. Another example of her skilful mixing and matching occurs in the G minor Concerto after Vivaldi’s central Largo, where a lute stop colours the left-hand accompaniment upon which the right-hand melody floats.

However, Farr’s frequent phrase distensions throw the musical baby out with the musicological bathwater, so to speak. Take, for instance, the C major Concerto after Vivaldi’s first movement, where the famous theme either lurches ahead or lags behind. Farr’s rhythm often falls out of focus in the face of arpeggiated chords and ornaments. Granted, one does not want metronomic “sewing machine” interpretations but when it comes to deciding when to broaden the tempo, “place” a cadence or spot just the appropriate place for a ritard, tenuto or any other expressive device, Farr’s well-intentioned solutions make a vague rather than purposeful impression. Still, Farr commands an excellent technique, and the robust immediacy of Naxos’s engineering ideally reproduces Farr’s large two-manual Keith Hill harpsichord.