Le Jeu Avec le Feu

The six trio sonatas stand out as an almost unique exception in Bach s output for the organ, essentially composed for the Lutheran liturgy in a style that is frequently much more severe and sometimes positively out of step with the tastes of his time. Here, though, all the ingredients of the style galant are present: the flexibility and singing character of the melodic lines, the purity and apparent simplicity of the three-part harmony, not forgetting the three-movement form.

The practice of performing music on original instruments was once the exclusive domain of early music specialists who sought to revive the characteristic sounds of Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical instruments and ensembles scaled to proper size. The so-called "historically informed movement" eventually expanded into re-creating 19th century music, which yielded some ear-opening performances; but this practice soon began to overlap with modern interpretation and instrumentation, so the actual differences between period and modern strings or winds were minimal.