There is nothing extravagant, idiosyncratic or exceptional about this recording except its infallible good taste. Harpsichordist Masato Suzuki, who serves as principal conductor of the Bach Collegium Japan, adds to a crowded field of recordings surveying the first volume of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The results, even-tempered and sensible, are a recording that can serve as a pleasurable benchmark for anyone seeking a traversal that honours every detail of the music without imposing on it a wilful or heavy-handed interpretation.

Suzuki uses a bright, clear 1987 two-manual instrument based on an original by the Couchet shop. But one hardly notices registration changes, and the performer isn’t given to wide variations of timbre, or promiscuous use of a buff stop or other novelties. Rather, he manifests variety and colour with touch and judicious use of tempo and agogic emphasis. None of this is to imply that these are bland or boring readings. If you have an ideal sense of how these works should go, how fast or slow, how smooth or bumptious, how sweet or acerbic, Suzuki is very likely to approximate all of the right choices.

When he does occasionally tug at the familiarity of the music, the results are all the more appealing for being subtle and nuanced. He uses a light, infectious staccato for the theme of Fugue No 19 in A, with its lone, isolated first note like a solitary bird chirp, followed by a parliament of happy fowls. Prelude No 21 is a rare but welcome display of virtuoso energy and aplomb. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the relatively brisk tempo of the final fugue, No 24 in B minor, usually taken at an agonised crawl, aligning the expressive gestures to the music of Bach’s most anguished cantatas or the Passions. Here, the fast tempo gathers the fugue into a satisfying, manageable whole, a serious, weighty but not oppressive view of the music.

And that seems to describe Suzuki’s broader view of the music, which is that music is music, serious, substantial and demanding, no more but never less than what is printed on the page.