Nascent

I am always willing to listen to Bach transcriptions because they are so much in the composers own idiom as an inveterate recycler and transcriber, and they often work very well. This set is generally pretty successful, I'd say. Bert Lams's steel-strung guitar gives a slight edge to the music with a slightly harpsichord-ish sound and I like the effect very much.The programme is slightly eccentric, presenting the preludes to the first five of the Cello Suites and the E major Violin Partita, along with the whole of the B minor Partita (but omitting the Allemande) and the mighty chaconne from the D minor Partita. The omission of a movement from the B minor Partita, for whatever reason, sounds quite wrong to me, but kicking off with good performances of two of Bach's Greatest Hits is a good idea and in general the programme works pretty well.Bert Lams is a very good guitarist and generally gives these pieces a nice feel, but I had a few slight reservations. Just occasionally I felt that he was up against the limits of his technique and, possibly as a result of this, there is a slight lack of real depth and interpretative insight throughout. The great chaconne sounds attractive enough, but players like Rachel Podger and Viktoria Mullova on the violin and Nigel North on the lute (to name just three) have shown the phenomenal emotional depth in this movement which simply isn't there in Lams's recording. I felt this in other places, too.Overall, though, this is well worth hearing. It's an interesting idea which is pretty well executed and I can recommend this to anyone with an interest in Bach.