An enjoyably no-nonsense kind of playing makes the opening movement of Bach’s Concerto in D minor, BWV1052, extremely striking. Soloist Andrew Arthur and the one-to-a-part strings of The Hanover Band play with a feisty swing. Like windows flung open after the rain, there’s a matter-of-fact muscularity to the performance, and continuo team Henrik Persson and Kate Brooke provide copious flexing. It’s fun. Incredibly funky playing from Arthur, too, makes this movement – particularly the cadenza-like peroration that drives into the final recapitulation of the main theme – perhaps the album’s highlight.

This approach, however, doesn’t quite carry off in the concerto’s second movement. I need more rhetorical drama to make sense of Bach’s phrases. There’s a weirdness to the unison writing here, and Arthur and The Hanover Band do not quite do justice to its strange turns and puzzled brows. The illusion that Bach’s music is so good that it plays itself – it doesn’t – is far too apparent. A similar story colours the third movement of the Concerto in G minor, BWV1058 (better known in its version as the Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV1041). Supposedly an allegro assai, but you wouldn’t guess that from this performance: it’s far too slow and unexciting. The string-playing is too smoothed over for my taste. And once you’ve heard Matthew Truscott play this movement as a fiery gigue in a Lowestoft pub, sadly there’s little chance of going back. Arthur’s lightning fingers can certainly handle it, so I’m not sure what guided this tempo choice.

Yet this album is well worth your time. The single-string forces for the most part work gleamingly well. Sometimes, of course, I desire more lusciousness, more impact, more unbridled swoosh of sound that comes from a section of violins, yet the space that this gives the solo harpsichord is rewarding. The second movement of BWV1058 is excellent in this regard. Arthur’s ornamentation is interesting yet delicately scented, and his trills keep the harpsichord’s line singing in the most spectacular fashion. Is enough knee-bending love given at the slippage into the subdominant? Definitely not as much as my violin professor would have wanted when I was a student at music college – and definitely not as much as required today to make my heart flutter.