The new Offering from Harmonia Mundi faces formidable opposition from several versions that have come my way in recent years. Many of them are still available in the UK catalogue; but one of my favourites, directed by Gustav Leonhardt though now ostensibly in the CD lists of Pro Arte has yet to manifest itself. Others, such as that of Cologne Musica Antiqua (Archiv Produktion as part of a three-disc set), members of the Vienna Concentus Musicus, the Linde Consort and the Leipzig Bach Collegium (Capriccio/Target) are currently around, both to offer healthy competition and stimulate lively debate. Whilst it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the only feature which all these versions have in common is the music itself, the differences in instrumentation and in the sequence of movements are such that strict comparisons are not really useful. Take the Canon Per Augmentationem, contrario motu, for exampie, above which Bach charmingly wrote in Latin, ''Like the note values, so may the king's happiness also increase'': Harnoncourt performs this with two violins and a tenor viola, Leonhardt prefers two violins and a bass viol—nearly but not quite the same sound effect. Cologne Musica Antiqua do likewise, but the Leipzig Bach Collegium opt for violin and harpsichord. Davitt Moroney, on the other hand, uses two harpsichords which brings me to the chief way in which his new recording differs from the others. It is that apart from the Trio Sonata Sopr'il Soggetto Reale which Bach scored for fiute, violin and basso continuo, the canon for violins in unison only one in fact is used here and in the second Canon Perpetuus, in contrary motion—he plays the remaining movements on one or, where required two harpsichords.
At first I thought Moroney's solution perhaps a little colourless and a little severe, but from a musical standpoint it makes a great deal of sense since it gives strands of equal importance opportunity for balanced, equivocal dialogue, and of course, Moroney's harpsichord playing is admirable, as anyone who has heard his Harmonia Mundi recordings of Louis Couperin's Pieces de clavecin or Bach's Art of Fugue (a Gramophone Award-winner) will expect. The Trio Sonata, in which he is joined by John Holloway, Janet See and Jaap ter Linden, is interesting in its approach too. There is a real spirit of Empfindsamkeit abroad here, and why not—the music belongs to the late 1740s when such emotional stirrings were discernible. These artists phrase beautifully and articulate intelligibly, and I very much like their choice of tempos which are, by and large, far brisker than those adopted by the Linde Consort for example, yet more leisurely, at least in the opening Largo, than the too smart a pace set by Leonhardt, Kuijken et al. I do wish John Holloway could bring a more congenial aspect to his playing than he sometimes does here. It does not lack either subtlety or virtuosity but it wants warmth and charm. The ensemble is wellbalanced and clearly and resonantly recorded. Recommended but rather in conjunction with than instead of one or more of the others cited. Linde, perhaps, is the least interesting of them and all but the Capriccio version—in which a Silbermann fortepiano of 1746 with an interesting history attached to it is used—prefer a harpsichord as the keyboard member of the ensemble.'