In a thoughtful and unpretentious essay accompanying this new recording of Bach's Brendeburg Concertos Ton Koopman remarks upon the well-known fact that Bach liked brisk tempos. "Contemporary soloists, like modern ones," says Koopman, "enjoyed showing off their technique." Well, I was expecting helter-skelter performances after reading that but, in fact, Koopman's tempos are generally quite moderate and never gave me the feeling of pushing the music harder or faster than it naturally wants to go. There have been several sets of Brandenburgs on period instruments and at baroque pitch issued over the past two years or so. Some have given me greater pleasure then others but there is no doubt in my own mind that Koopman's version is at least equal to the best of them. He uses a small band, much the same in size as The English Concert on Archiv Produktion, for example, and the prevailing principle is of one player to a part except in the case of Concertos Nos. 1 and 2, which are clearly more in the nature of orchestral works. But, unlike Nikolaus Harnoncourt, in his recent recording of these concertos for Teldec, Koopman treats Concerto No. 6 as a solo work without excessive contrast between solos and tutti sections.

I felt that there was hardly a movement here which didn't come off well under Koopman's lively and musical direction. A feature of his approach is the freedom he grants to his players and to himself, both as solo and continuo harpsichordist, in matters of embellishment. There is a great deal of it throughout the set which I found both natural and tasteful. In Concerto No. 1 there is some fine horn playing and an affecting degree of fantasy in the haunting Adagio. The delicate solo violino piccolo playing offers beautiful phrasing here, as indeed does the oboist, too. In the robust third movement I found the timbre of that member of the violin family, tuned a third higher than a standard violin, just a little too small to hold its own against other components of the texture. The Menuet is very polished, with elegant poise but the Polacca I felt was too brisk and its character understated.

Concerto No. 3 in G is effectively played as a concerto for soloists and I admire Koopman's relaxed approach. Perhaps the first movement lacks something in the way of spontaneity but the finale is very good indeed. Koopman's solution to the cadential chords which separate the two movements is to insert the slow movement of the harpsichord Toccata in G, BWV916. It works well. The solo violin playing in Concerto No. 4 is excellent. Monica Huggett's warm, sweet tone and her ability to project detail make her performance amongst the finest that I have yet heard. The fugal third movement is admirably clear in its transparency of texture.

Roy Goodman is the solo violinist in Concerto No. 5; I was impressed by his performance, too, and especially perhaps in the Affettuoso where there is a notable rapport between flute, violin and harpsichord. Affettuoso means just that with Koopman, and his performance is deliberately 'affecting'. In fact, in the bars leading up to that perhaps most affecting of all passages (bar 30) I wondered if the playing wasn't in danger of becoming a little too mannered. Be that as it may the awareness of the transparent texture of this movement makes it a satisfying performance. Jan Schlapp and Trevor Jones seem to have assumed the mantle of eighteenth-century itinerant baroque musicians who travelled from court to court offering their services. This is the third recorded set of Brandenburgs in which they play the viola parts. They are very good, too, though there are occasional sounds of discomfort in the passage immediately preceding the last tutti of the first movement.

The trumpeter in the Concerto No. 2 is Crispian Steele-Perkins. His performance is very assured and he, perhaps, more successfully than others I have heard recently, manages to concel many of the problems which arise from playing this ferociously difficult music on a valveless instrument. There is some effective dynamic contrast in the string playing which I enjoyed, both in this concerto and throughout the set. The Andante is tastefully ornamented and played with sensibility.