Could be. I wasn't much impressed with that either, not just for the reason you mention but also because it all seems to me too slow and expressionless (and distantly recorded).

Autoharp wasn't impressed with (what we presume was) John Holloway's recording. Neither was I. Clearer?

I spun the 15 Sonatas this evening.

Marianne Rônez, baroque violin
Arno Jochem, viola da gamba, baroque cello
Michael Freimuth, theorbo
Ernst Kubitschek, chamber organ

It's pretty clear that these musicians love the harmonic language of this music (or should I say languages?) and the resonant properties  of various registers -- it seems they are striving to linger as long as they possibly can, to focus like lasers on the inflections of proper intonation, but without entirely obliterating a sense of meter. The balance they achieve between these concerns I find quite convincing, though I can imagine it's not to everyone's taste... sometimes the edge of metric coherence is gleefully overstepped, a dissonance drawn out 'too long', etc... suffice it to say that the push and pull that the harmonies seem to demand is addressed in a sometimes very daring way. On top of this metric Kühnheit (Engl. intrepidness, sort of), they also have to negotiate the composer's instrumental writing on the one hand, and his novel approach to stereotypical baroque dance tropes. It all combines to produce a sensitive and literally 'searching' performance. Some of the most rhythmically recalcitrant passages sound as if the performers had invented these rhythms for the first time ever, or maybe found them underneath a rock somewhere (see? they were literally "searching"...  )

There are times when the violinist is so well-embedded in the continuo that her tone gets entirely lost, though a split second before she was far more prominent. I didn't hear a single moment of ensemble problems (though there was some roughness that I can only describe as studiously bucolic). Sometimes the lilt of a phrase would reach a dangerous tilt, so that the resolution of some dissonance, left in a well-buried inner voice, would manifest itself in an extremely brief organ note -- an isolated little sound that would sound random or misplaced in any other context.

In short, as far removed from boring as I can imagine (my imagination is admittedly limited), and without a hint of affectation. The players must have lived this music for a long time before committing it to bits and bytes.

Thumbs up. Five stars (out of a possible cinq)

Hmm, it seems from the BBC website they didn't play my favourite so far (I've probably mentioned it before):



Don't like the readings much but the violin playing is superb.