This most enjoyable collection is drawn from earlier releases on Analekta's excellent Fleur de Lys label, each featuring harpsichordist Soly and one or two of the musicians listed above. Serious collectors will have little use for this CD if they have the complete originals, and would be better off buying the originals if they don't. These recordings are good enough that it might be a little frustrating only to own a sampling.

For the more casual listener, however, this would make an ideal introduction to some of Bach's most attractive chamber music. Soly is a great player with a fine feeling for Bach and each of the others is distinguished on his or her own instrument. The names are likely already familiar to you already. If they're not, then you really need this CD.

Two of Bach's violin sonatas are included and a comparison of the performances of Jeann Lamon in the G Major and Chatal Rémillard in the A Major is instructive. It isn't that there are any radical differences in their approaches or sounds, but rather that there are subtle differences, very subtle, in the musical personality each player brings to the work.

The recorded sound is open, spacious and altogether natural. The sound-staging of the instruments is precise but unobtrusive. All in all, this is a disc worth having, if not quite as worth having as the originals.