Perhaps if I were to join the ranks of this magazine's endlessly discriminating contributors to the Euridice correspondence, someone at Philips may read the letter and reissue the classic, complete, and musically authentic Accardo / Gazeau / Meunier / Petracchi recording of the string quartet version of the sonatas. (Contrary to what most currently available records suggest, you can get all six sonatas onto a single CD.) As things stand, we continue to be bombarded with string-band arrangements of four favoured sonatas.
Mark Stephenson and London Musici have been winning golden opinions of late and there is little to choose between them and Furi's Berne Camerata on DG. If anything, the Swiss group is marginally more assured when the music threatens temporarily to go into orbit, and they are sometimes funnier. In the newer recording the bass playing in the finale of the Third Sonata is a shade too deadpan for comfort. Either way you are buying short measure, not to mention selections and arrangements. The clear first choice if you want the sonatas in this string ensemble version is Scimone's Erato/Warner Classics CD or cassette of all six sonatas, splendidly played by I Solisti Veneti. Meanwhile, if you are listening, Euridice....'