It must have been a touch galling for Miklós Spányi, as he prepared to record these four works for Vol 18 of his complete cycle of CPE Bach’s keyboard concertos towards the end of 2011, to see Andreas Staier and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra taking a Gramophone Award for their powerful recording of the full set of six Wq43 concertos. Spányi’s project – concurrent with his survey of the complete solo keyboard music – has integrities of its own, however, and his attention to detail when it comes to choosing instruments is one of them. Here he uses a copy of a 1745 Dulcken, being the closest he could get hold of, he says, to the late English harpsichords which, with their big sound and armoury of sound-changing tricks, were the state-of-the-art models in the last battles against the emerging piano. Staier used a German harpsichord which positively bristled with stops but Spányi steals a march by attaching swell shutters to his instrument (don’t worry, it’s quite authentic!), thus making possible crescendos and diminuendos. It’s a slightly strange sensation when you first hear it, but the whole exercise is typical of the loving care which Spányi has given to his recordings. The performances themselves are very good, with neat, crisp fingerwork from Spányi expertly balanced with a one-to-a-part orchestra which is clean and efficient, if not in the same league of slick precision and energy as the FBO.

No less enthusiastic about CPE Bach is pianist Michael Rische, who has produced a second volume of concertos for Hänssler, though with rather different results. Rische’s desire is to claim the works for the modern piano – and it is a churl who would want to stop him – but I cannot feel he has made much of a case for it in the three works recorded here, two from the 1740s and one from the 1772 set. Quite simply, it is surprising just how bland and heavy a piano can sound in this music and the elaborate right-hand figuration in some of the slow movements – easy and elegant on a harpsichord – comes across as fidgety and awkward. That puts it at odds with the stylish playing of the modern-instrument orchestra, but Rische’s decision to perform Wq43/4 as a solo because Bach wrote out reductions of the ritornellos for the player’s convenience makes no more sense. Spányi and Staier are more securely on the right track.