Title: Pale, tepid Bach
Product review: Anyone who has heard these works recorded by Musica Antiqua Koln for DG years ago will find the polite performance put in by these Brits a complete snoozefest. The total lack of gestural expressivity in this recording makes it arguably perfect dinner/background music, but the mere ghost of an adequate performance. This recording will arouse no strong partisans, which is perhaps the reason it is has been so little reviewed, here and elsewhere.The advocacy of some "big time" record producers for such timid performers, at labels such as Harmonia Mundi, is perhaps now being rewarded by record sales that are in the doldrums. You just can't keep putting out a boring product and saying it is teriffic forever without justification: the public gets turned off and looks elsewhere.
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