Since no one knows if Bach actually intended anyone to play The Art of Fugue at all – it was published in open score with no indication of instrumentation – it has followed that everyone from viol consorts to brass quintets and harpsichordists to string quartets has felt free to have a go at it. But while how you play it is undoubtedly more important than what you play it on, most listeners will probably have preferences over what kind of sound it makes, and perhaps also how varied that sound will be over the course of 70 minutes.

Brecon Baroque offer the 14 fugues of this great cycle on single strings – a Baroque string quartet if you like, sometimes with two violas instead of two violins, sometimes reduced to a trio and sometimes with harpsichord continuo – while the four two-part canons are shared between a viola-cello duo and a solo harpsichord. The sound spectrum thus has a contained and organic feel to it without running too much risk of sounding samey – only once do adjoining fugues employ the exact same scoring. More importantly, it brings a yielding human quality that is perhaps not so easily achieved on, say, solo harpsichord or organ, but which suits very well the communicative but unaffected musicianship that has always been Rachel Podger’s hallmark. This is not an interpretation that wants to grab you by the lapels – as would its nearest equivalent in terms of scoring, Musica Antiqua Köln’s brilliantly detailed 1984 version (Archiv/DG, 6/85) – but rather one which by its natural ebb and flow aims to draw you stealthily into the music and have you breathe with it, so that you don’t notice the fugal climaxes coming until your own chest is swelling.

With comforting sound (if not the clarity of the MAK recording, the harpsichord in particular being rather indistinct) and a typically perspicacious booklet-note by John Butt, this is a warm and convincing ‘Baroque-look’ Art.