Richard Egarr's programme is an attractive one in which three major solo harpsichord works – the Partita (BWV825), the French Suite (BWV816), and the Italian Concerto (BWV971) – are interspersed with Preludes, Minuets and two Fugues from the Kellner Collection, the Clavier-Büchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, 'the son I love, the one who fills me with joy', and the Notenbuch for Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena. The character of Egarr's instrument, a copy by Joel Katzman of a 1638 Ruckers, has been effectively recorded, capturing its warm timbre in an intimate, domesticsounding ambience.
Egarr's B flat Partita is an unhurried affair, reflective in its Prelude and Allemande and rhythmically supple. Some readers may not at once respond to the extent to which he leans on notes, thereby breaking up that strict regularity of pulse that used to be the order of the day.
His articulation and rhythmic flexibility are both illuminating and communicative. The music breathes, and with each breath comes a natural pause in the declamation allowing for rhetorical gesture and a feeling for scansion.
Just occasionally in the Sarabande phrases are a little too clipped and skimped over, but such instances, both here and in the French Suite, are both few and far between. Each of the little Preludes and Minuets is lovingly shaped and played with a sense of affection for, and understanding of, the music's poetry. In short this is an outstanding disc, both for Egarr's technically accomplished playing and for his delicacy of feeling.