It is 22 years since Savall and Koopman first recorded the Bach gamba sonatas, in the days when Koopman still looked like he should have been presenting The Old Grey Whistle Test. This release for Savall's own Alia Vox label, however, is right up to date, a tame-haired Koopman and an amazingly unaltered Savall having set them down at the beginning of this year. The recording's quick turnaround is a fitting reflection of the state of the musical relationship that has obtained between these two ever since they first performed together in 1970 after only half an hour's rehearsal. Make no mistake, these Bach performances are right in the slot.
Like Bach's violin sonatas, these are effectively trio sonatas in which the right hand of the harpsichord has a melodic role on an equal footing with the gamba, and it is in this respect that the rapport between these players is best shown. One of the delights of this disc, indeed, is the way each plays the same melodic material slightly differently according to the nature of his instrument. Savall's long notes are drawn out with impeccable crescendos, while Koopman, unable to do the same on the harpsichord, adorns his with lovingly shaped trills and arabesques. Similarly, Koopman's idiosyncratic habit of beginning a long and potentially mechanical-sounding trill at startlingly slow speed and then accelerating with an impressive iron control, is not needed by Savall. Together, however, they conjure performances whose sheer rightness and creative warmth - from the concentrated emotion of the slower movements to the busy dialogues of the faster ones - make the music sound invigoratingly fresh. And as so often with older and wiser second recordings, there is a relaxed freedom here, compared to which the earlier version, fine though it is, sounds crucially stilted.
The sound is clear and well balanced enough to highlight the interplay between the instruments while remaining natural - too much so, perhaps, in those frequent places where one of the players can be heard making almost conversational grunts and groans. Savall uses three fine instruments, none of them less than 243 years old, while Koopman's harpsichord (more prominent than in the earlier recording) is a 1730s German original of robust health, though its tuning does not always hold. The disc is made up to length by an arrangement of one of the recently much-plundered organ trios, making this a Bach gamba release to measure others by.

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