András Schiff, Chamber Orchestra of Europe - J.S. Bach: Concertos BWV 1052-58 (1990)

When it comes to the Bach keyboard concertos, there are three sets that at once go to the top, in my estimation: Those with Angela Hewitt and Murray Perahia as soloist, and this release with Andras Schiff. Each has its own inclinations and collective nuance, and I will admit that as each day or week passes my own mood shifts, causing me to favor one over the others and then change my mind. One reviewer has downgraded Schiff's performances as lacking emotional involvement, which may be a fair comment, perhaps, but even if true that judgment is hardly an argument against these recordings. I may not be making sense, but at times I rather like crystalline performances like that, where there may not be emotional involvement of the performer in the Romantic sense but rather an analytic deconstruction of emotion by the music itself. Maybe that's a fancy way of saying that I occasionally like to concentrate on the structure of the concertos' music without having excess emotion cloud the issue. In any case, I have found these recordings to be durable friends; I've been listening to them without any reduction of enthusiasm for the past two decades. I admire Hewitt's and Perahia's cycles as well, but I must admit I come back to this set than I do to them. At the time of this writing, the disc version appears to be out of print, so either pick up a used copy in good condition or consider buying it in downloadable mp3 format instead. Maybe it will become your dependable companion as well.