I prefer the sound of Bach’s keyboard music to be played on a modern piano, my go-to recordings of the concertos being those by Angela Hewitt and András Schiff. I’ll make an exception for this new Hyperion set, Mahan Esfahani using a gorgeous-sounding modern copy of a German baroque harpsichord. He’s accompanied by a slimmed-down Britten Sinfonia, Esfahani believing that these works “make their maximum impact on record with an ensemble of one player to each part”, those ensemble players using modern instruments. There’s an interesting quote near the end of Esfahani’s booklet essay, arguing that this approach “fundamentally liberates the harpsichord from antiquity and thus propels the instrument and its sound into the realm of the immediate and living”. Plus, his harpsichord is a modern one.

Enough waffle: these are hugely enjoyable performances, superbly balanced, one big gain being that the strings never feel subservient, the keyboard always in a dialogue with equals. Take the bright opening movement of Concerto No 3, violinist Jacqueline Shave and colleagues singing like birds while Esfahani purrs away underneath. The major-key concertos have rarely sounded so upbeat, No 4’s elegant finale one of the highlights of the set. No 6, a joyous recasting of Bach’s 4th Brandenburg Concerto, features Michala Petri alongside Ian Wilson on recorders.

Especially intriguing is Esfahani’s reconstruction of an unfinished 8th Concerto in D minor, based on material from the cantata Geist und Seele wird verwirret, two sinfonia movements linked by a harpsichord cadenza. The A minor Triple Concerto is included, despite Esfahani’s doubts about its authenticity, Shave and flautist Thomas Hancox on terrific form in the central “Adagio”. This is a wonderful, set, stylishly played and directed, beautifully recorded and very well annotated.