Performance intentions expressed in booklet interviews can often present difficulties for listeners. Here, the iconoclastic impression of Yorck Kronenberg conveyed as free-spirited boundary buster and juggler of his artistic pursuits, as writer and pianist, sets up a complete Bach solo keyboard concertos with expectations rather different to what we ultimately experience.

While all seven concertos are enterprisingly curated on distinct canvases – not least the F major (BWV1057), modelled on the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, performed on the harpsichord – Kronenberg’s clear sense of identity for each ‘transcription’ (these Collegium Musicum pieces are all reworked from previous models, mostly violin concertos) is diluted by a consistent vocabulary of mannerisms which defines a general sympathy, or not, with this project.

Kronenberg partly adopts a ‘period’ approach with (almost) no sostenuto pedalling in the piano, matched by the strings of the Zürcher Kammerorchester who have emphatically switched on the senza vibrato button. With this – especially in the beautifully galant reading of the E major Concerto (BWV1053) – there is a strikingly deliberate and transparent contrapuntal dialogue between piano and strings to join the purposeful and fashionable rhythmic energy driving the outer movements.

Belying the idea of spontaneity and esprit, however, a studied placement of ornaments, often excessive trilling in place of colorific adventure, joins an increasingly incoherent compendium of gestures. These range from melodramatic crescendos in the slow movement of the D major, BWV1054 (not to mention curious hairpin surges in the first and an eccentric petering out in the final movement) to a geometric anti-lyricism in Kronenberg’s furious first movement of the radiant A major (BWV1055).

The cocktail of musical choices here may simply derive from an aesthetic of Bach performance which is in the process of taking root. Unfortunately it’s one which, as yet, is clunkily clad in hard-driven bass-lines and unyielding articulations which rarely take you out of the text and into Bachian Elysium.