This is very unusual Bach. The Fantasia in C minor has only recently been identified as being by Bach and Vogel identifies the spurious Sarabande con Partite as being based on the Overture to Lully's opera Bellerophon. In the performances themselves Vogel has ventured some way off the established course. Incomprehensibly he combines the early version of the G minor Prelude (BWV535a) with the final version of its Fugue (BWV535), while he finishes an already disjointed performance of the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue (the Toccata suffering from rather more echo effects than is really good for it) by picking up the Toccata again (from bar 32) immediately after the Fugue. I can't begin to fathom the thinking behind this and Vogel makes no attempt to justify this course of action in his accompanying notes. But there again it does the soul good to have established truths questioned, and this disc does nothing if not question some fundamental beliefs in Bach performances. It would be nice, however, if we were given a few answers.
Apart from registrative eccentricities in BWV564 the novelties in Vogel's performances always have some musical justification; how refreshing, for example, to hear the great In dulci jubilo Prelude played on humble eight and four foot Flutes. I do wonder, though, whether he is sometimes tempted to adapt his musical arguments to suit this particular organ, not least in that strangest of all Bach works, the Pastorale. Here Vogel justifies his employment of the Dulcian stop (one of the particular delicacies of this wonderful instrument) by claiming its use as being in the ''folk tradition of using reed instruments to play pastorellas outdoors''. He might have also added that there is a tradition for these not to have been played particularly well; but no one can dispute that Vogel's performances, full of oddities as they are, are anything other than brilliantly executed. One final enigma bothers me; the booklet includes a murky photograph of one Signore Sandro Boccardi—why?'