Period ensemble Les Récréations have recorded Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge BWV 1080 for Ricercar, led by Matthieu Camilleri on violin, piccolo violin, and viola, Sandrine Dupé on violin, Clara Mühlethaler on viola and violin, Julien Hainsworth on cello piccolo and Keiko Gomi on cello.

There have been no shortage of recordings of Bach’s ultimate work (of course, this is up for debate that stands as his last work, and what stands for his best work, pun intended) but very few have left me fully satisfied. The work is approached by all types, from single keyboard players to small ensembles; Bach’s use of open score left a specific instrumentarium unsettled, but looking at his penultimate Musical Offering BWV 1079, we might have expected a combination of common instruments to be in the running. What I’m looking for in a recording of BWV 1080 is some character, with each voice presenting a personality of its own. This is harder to do with solo keyboard. I often come back to a pair of recordings, made decades before, for the style I’m after: the DG Archiv recording with Musica Antiqua, Köln, playing with keyboard(s) and strings and the duet on Erato between Ton Koopman and wife Tini Mathot.

This new recording features strings only — no keyboardists were utilized. The record company’s website says of this ensemble: “Always in search of a distinctive sound identity, their maxims are vocality, balance, harmonic colours, density of the grain and richness of sound.”

Vocality, balance, color, grain and richness of sound? The website is marketing, but I think this description is pretty apt. The recording’s sound is clear, with plenty of definition but then strikes a balance with sound that is also got plenty of reverb.

String quartets have approached this music in the past. The recording by the Emerson Quartet, a non-period ensemble, is far too spoiled with vibrato and a way of playing that seems foreign to me. In the period camp, Musica Antiqua wasn’t outdone by later peers, but their solution wasn’t purely string-based either. This recording by Récréations seems to be ideal, at least for an all-strings approach to Bach’s evolving collection of fugues based upon a simple, humble theme.

Camilleri isn’t a name I’m really familiar with, but his credentials speak of his study with both Chiara Banchini and Rudolf Lutz, two well-known specialists in early music. His sound, alongside that of his colleagues, is delicious. Their instruments seem to gel together with that grain of gut strings and darker color that sounds particularly cohesive. It brings to mind luthiers who might fashion instruments that were meant to play together in consort; in this case I can’t say who has made their instruments but they nevertheless seem to be well-matched.

The musicians perform a contrapuntal solution to the unfinished, final fugue. However, it’s oddly not attached to Bach’s music; it’s presented as a type of coda, which I ultimately found strange. It’s a performance solution that seems half-baked. In a time when other recordings are doing the same in offering a completed version from proffered from the musician(s), this solution would have been improved by firmly pasting it abut to the notes left by Bach. Their booklet notes make the distinction that the work was not unfinished, but that the score was left incomplete.

My preference for the ultimate movement aside, this recording moves to the front of the line for me. Each track is played with flair, at tempos that I think work well. The use of a harpsichord in the string texture never made sense to me as the music Bach left really didn’t fit the mold for using basso continuo. I think this solution (5 players) works so well. While Bach may very well have played this himself on a keyboard, I think Les Récréations make a great case for it being scored for all strings; the use of “Italian” instruments over viols, I think, too is more historically appropriate. With several good viol consorts already contributing recordings, this one is welcome.

While I auditioned this recording via Qobuz at high resolution, I also purchased the CD copy as it has become my new reference. Enthusiastically recommended. I look forward to more recordings from this ensemble!