What this is, dear reader, is an orchestration of Bach’s probably pedagogical Orgelbuchlein, maybe designed to teach his sons how to play the pedal, and maybe not—we just aren’t sure. What we can be sure of is that any time one decides to transcribe an organ work one had better know what one is doing, or the results can be disastrous. In this case, the eight member of the Ensemble Mare Nostrum negotiate this music with such adeptness and absolute authority than I am tempted to say that they make it seem as if Bach himself had scored these 45+ chorales for this very instrumentation (tenor viol, portative organ, bass viol(s), boy and female soprano, archlute). The arrangements are all highly stylish and period-pointed, the playing remarkably fluid and concise, and believe it or not, not an ounce of boredom through the 70-odd minutes of this disc, even though we are only hearing chorales.
But what chorales! These beauties are all four-part contrapuntist-scored and constitute Bach not at his most teaching-oriented (of which he always was) but also at his most inspired. The music is simply beautiful (no doubt aided by the exceptional orchestration), and I just reveled in it with nary a thought about anything else for the entire hour. The skills with which the various colors and instrumental capabilities are combined startle the senses and make one wish to beg for more. Truly this is as delightful a baroque album as I have encountered all year, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!
MA recordings seems to be a wide ranging company that records all kinds of music, and Todd Garfinkle says this about the recordings on their website (ww.marecordings.com):