This new recording of Bach's four Orchestral Suites has many engaging qualities against which I must set one or two irritating ones. Most intrusive of all is an over-fussy harpsichord continuo. The problem is only intermittent but if I tell you that it steals the initial utterance of the overture to the Suite in C major you will have some idea of how eager it is to be heard. The most striking feature of Peter Schreier's interpretation of this movement, however, concerns rhythmic rather than instrumental matters; for in its slow opening and closing sections he not only overdots the rhythm in the places indicated and in the manner generally accepted but he also introduces a saccade element to the undotted quaver sequences. This eccentricity has an enlivening effect on the music while also bearing some relation to its overall rhythmic pattern but its propriety is questionable. What readers may find somewhat tiring on a growing acquaintance is Schreier's predilection for clipped and detached articulation in the faster sections of the overtures to the Suites and in many of the dances. I found the effect lacking both in subtlety and refinement though it is anything but lifeless.
In general matters of style Schreier, as we might expect from an artist with such wide experience of baroque music, is informed and fluent. Appoggiaturas abound—how did we ever manage without them in all those old recordings of Bach's overtures and dances?—and there is careful attention given to textural clarity. The solo flautist in the Suite in B minor is Irena Grafenauer, whose modern flute sounds both bright and warm. She phrases the music effectively, though the long appoggiaturas in the first full bar of each section of the Sarabande are nonsensically long, hardly even to be considered as auxiliary or merely ornamental. They are similarly introduced in the Gavotte I of the Third Suite where I liked them even less. Her vibrato is well controlled though at times of a distracting intensity.
The two D major Suites come over well though it seems a shame to have coupled them together on the second disc of the set when the keys of B minor and G minor could have performed a useful function in breaking up the tonal pattern. Schreier favours a very brisk pace for the allegro section of the overture to the Suite No. 3 and brings it off well with excellent violin concertante playing by Thorsten Rosenbusch, the leader of the band.
The remaining Suite in G minor is not, of course, by Bach, but may well be from the pen of his eldest son Wilhelm Friedermann. As Malcolm Boyd points out in his helpful and interesting essay, there are too many incongruities of both style and design for it to be accepted as a genuine Bach work. It is rather a patchy piece, too—as sure a sign as any that Bach himself had little or nothing to do with it. The scoring is for strings only and the orchestra do it some justice.
To sum up, this is a mainly successful enterprise with some pleasing features, notable among which is the sheer vitality of the playing under Schreier's direction. It is probably the most interesting of the 'modern instrument' versions but it is also at times the most eccentric in matters of ornament and rhythm. A qualified recommendation.'