This three-CD set features Richard Boothby’s Fretwork consort playing his intriguing transcriptions of Bach keyboard works for the instrumentation of a slightly earlier era. Bach probably never had access to a full consort of viols, though pieces such as the “Passacaglia” and the “Prelude & Fugue XVI” from The Well-Tempered Clavier adapt so smoothly to the strings’ interplay, and so naturally within their timbres, that they might have been written for the then-unfashionable consort.
The Goldberg variations, meanwhile, were originally written for a two-keyboard harpsichord, which eases the transcription to multiple viols. The Art of Fugue represents Bach’s final, unfinished immersion into counterpoint: restricted to just the D minor key and simple Dorian mode, it seems at times to be stationary, the viols’ lines inscribing complex figures in the same spot, intertwining like a winding-sheet around his legacy.