Bach’s concertos mostly survive in manuscripts which the composer rearranged for keyboard, both for himself and in multi-form, to play with his sons in Leipzig. Speculation on exactly when such pieces were originally written, and for what instruments they were intended, has been one of the most circular parlour games in musical history; theories on tessitura, idiom, rhetorical figures and so on have all played a part in this largely hypothetical debate. Scholarly cul-de-sacs have, however, hardly discouraged the likes of Rainer Kussmaul and others from presenting these pieces in a variety of ways.

It soon becomes clear in programmes such as this that the issue really isn’t worth getting in a stew about. The Concerto in C major is, in any guise, a marvellous triple concerto which, since it first appeared on record in a reconstruction for three violins with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in 1975 (Decca, 4/76 – nla), has received several readings (with many textual variants and refinements) on disc. Few are as robustly and extrovertly conceived as this, gutsy playing indeed abounding from these flexible Berlin Philharmonic principals. Sitting alongside Jeanne Lamon’s elegant and lithe account with Tafelmusik and, more recently, an effervescent performance with Isabelle Faust under Helmuth Rilling on modern instruments, the Berliner Barock Solisten pursue a middle path. This is further exemplified in the G minor Violin Concerto with Kussmaul as soloist, where modern instruments (in his case a Strad, no less) are set-up for an easier Baroque ride.

The players here, and in Wolfram Christ’s captivating interpretation of the cantata-derived Concerto in D for viola (though in reality, it is no more a viola concerto than Tertis’s reading of the Elgar Cello Concerto), seem to find a happy medium of a stylishly-aware gestural palette without, for them, the disorientation of ‘period’ specialism. Most beguiling perhaps are the slow movements where the lyrical pedigree of these fine instrumentalists begin to shine. Oboist Albrecht Mayer makes another notable and welcome Bachian appearance on BWV1060, after his soulful obbligato contributions to the bass-cantata disc with Matthias Goerne (Decca, 4/00). A stimulating addition to the catalogue.