Masato Suzuki has not hung around in getting down both books of Bach’s Well-Tempered Claver. Book 1 came out only last year, and now, with hardly time for the harpsichord to go out of tune, here is Book 2 already. The impetuosity of youth, eh? By contrast, his father Masaaki put eight years between his recordings (also on BIS, 6/97, 4/09). (I wonder, by the way, if there can be any other case of two such closely related people recording this great keyboard compendium; perhaps for that we would need there to have been recordings in the Bach family’s day …)

Philip Kennicott’s review of Masato’s Book 1 (6/24) described it as ‘even-tempered and sensible’, making clear that this was one that, free of shocks or extremes and executed with quiet good taste, was easy to live with. So too Book 2. Using the same Willem Kroesbergen copy of a Couchet double-manual instrument, Suzuki unsurprisingly repeats his achievement of presenting 24 preludes and fugues in the clearest and most natural manner possible. And that may well be all you need. If there are places where one could imagine some players bringing stronger characterisation – examples might be to give more swagger to the C major Prelude or lean more into the tensions of the F sharp minor Prelude and Fugue – at no time does one feel Suzuki’s musical commitment is losing focus. And plenty of individual moments give pleasure: The D sharp minor Prelude shows how to let light into a busy texture with judiciously placed short notes; melody and harmony sing together beautifully in the F major Prelude; the A minor Fugue is a model of contrapuntal clarity. Added ornamentation is used sparingly but effectively and never gratuitously.

As before, Suzuki likes to keep moving the more spacious, old-style fugues such as the D sharp minor or E major, which some may feel deprives them of their grandeur, but I think does them no harm. I do confess, however, that certain of the livelier fugues sound rushed, losing transparency thereby, and in some other fast pieces the tempos can seem a tiny bit unsettled. But these are small and subjective things, and if I find myself mentioning a rattly key that irritated me from time to time, it is proof that there is nothing worse to complain of. If a more interventionist harpsichord ‘48’ is to your taste, you could try Ton Koopman (Erato, 2/95), Richard Egarr (Harmonia Mundi, 9/10) or John Butt (Linn, 1/15). Other straightforward wise-head versions can be had from Kenneth Gilbert (Archiv, 9/84), Davitt Moroney (Harmonia Mundi, 4/89) or Christophe Rousset (Aparté, 3/14). There is Suzuki Senior, too, of course, alongside which Junior’s sits well. Just don’t get them mixed up!