COMPOSERS: Bach
LABELS: Regent
WORKS: Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 550; Capriccio, BWV 992; Partita, BWV 767; Toccata in D, BWV 912; Toccata in E, BWV 566; Pastorale, BWV 590; Aria variata in A minor, BWV 989
PERFORMER: Margaret Phillips (organ, harpsichord)
CATALOGUE NO: REGCD 158
Margaret Phillips has devised a pleasing programme of music belonging to Bach’s youth. She
plays, alternately, two notably well-sounding instruments, a two-manual organ by Peter Collins and a two-manual, Ruckers-based harpsichord by Michael Johnson. The organ has a special relevance in the context of the disc in that it was built specially for the English Organ School and Museum at Milborne Port in Somerset, which Margaret Phillips and her husband founded in 1996 and in whose premises this
recording was made.
The programme provides the listener with a glimpse of the kind of things Bach was up to at the outset of his career. German and Italian influences are uppermost yet, almost throughout, there are constant flashes of an unmistakable Bach idiom. Margaret Phillips is equally fluent and articulate in both organ and harpsichord medium, offering an engagingly colourful account of the Capriccio ‘on the absence (departure) of a dear brother’ (harpsichord) and finely sustained playing of the Toccata in E (organ). Only the harpsichord Toccata in D struck me as underpowered. In summary, this is an attractive disc whose well-constructed menu should have wide appeal; and Paul Tindall’s accompanying notes are excellent. Nicholas Anderson