The six string symphonies grouped together with the Wotquenne number 182 are echt CPE Bach – if you wanted to demonstrate all that was remarkable and revolutionary about his art you need look no further than this. Composed in 1773 in Hamburg after he had escaped the restrictions of long service at the court of Frederick the Great, they are an explosion of expressive personality and daring which still has the power to shock and surprise, for which we have to thank that wise figure of 18th-century music Baron Gottfried van Swieten who commissioned the symphonies and encouraged Bach, as one contemporary put it, “to let himself go completely”. By turns angry, boisterous, mournful and humorous, the results stood alongside Haydn’s symphonies in showing what a dramatic and powerful vehicle the youthful genre could be.

A disc made up solely of these pocket-Herculeses can be a strong draft and Café Zimmermann serve only four of the six, breaking off in the middle for one of Bach’s earlier and more genial cello concertos. Their playing is alert and agile, and while a close recording reveals an occasional rawness to the string tone, it also brings an involving intimacy, clarity of texture and punchy energy. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra (DHM, 4/91), using the same number of players, sound slicker and more “orchestral” in their bigger acoustic, but also more ponderous. Petr Skalka is a rather Romantically inclined soloist in the Cello Concerto, especially in adding a luxurious cadenza to the slow movement, compared to which Alison McGillivray is more silkily 18th-century in her recent recording with the English Concert (Harmonia Mundi, 11/06). For the sheer excitement of the symphonies, however, this new disc is well worth a hearing.