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GRAMOPHONE (02/2017)
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Reviewer: Lindsay Kemp

How many careless shoppers, I wonder, will buy this disc thinking it contains the four Ouvertures (or Orchestral Suites) of JS Bach? Given that I know someone who once bought a disc of The Four Seasons only to discover when he got it home that it was played on panpipes, I’m sure these things can happen. But then that’s not always a bad thing, and certainly these pieces by Johann Bernhard Bach (1676‑1749), a slightly older second cousin of Sebastian’s, are worth a hearing, unexpected or otherwise. While there is no evidence that the two ever met, it seems inconceivable that they did not, and we know that Sebastian performed three of Bernhard’s four surviving suites at his Collegium Musicum concerts in Leipzig in the 1730s

Although similar in form to Sebastian’s suites, it is the melody-led examples of Telemann and Graupner that Bernhard’s call more readily to mind. Composed in the 1710s, they probably predate his cousin’s anyway, and are a little more old-fashioned in their closer relationship to the French style that spawned the genre, mixing courtly dance types such as the sarabande and the menuet with galanteries such as the rigaudon and passepied and even character pieces such as ‘Les Plaisirs’ and ‘La Joye’. The D major Suite has three Caprices which, judging by their dissimilarity, seems to be what Bernhard called anything he couldn’t think of another name for.

Expanding from their usual guise as a viol consort, L’Achéron perform stylishly and gracefully, adding well-chosen and effective wind doublings to Bach’s basic string texture. The low pitch they use robs the sound of a little brightness, but they can still draw poignancy from each suite’s tender Air and find energy in the looser rustic numbers. If not in the JSB league when all is said and done, these suites are still a pleasant encounter.

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