The Reading Life: The Pleasures of Proust

Taking a kind of counter-reformation stand against current purist approaches to Baroque music, pianist Erika Nickrenz, violinist Adela Pen~a and cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio play Bach, Vivaldi, Albinoni and other composers with “full-blown Romantic flair,” in the words of annotator James M. Keller. Well, that’s one way of putting it. Another is that the Eroica Trio’s sumptuous and dense ensemble sound often seems not merely anachronistic but also clotted. Minor, less familiar pieces such as Buxtahude’s Sonata in D come off best. The astonishing Chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D minor sounds simply overwrought. The realizations are either original transcriptions or editions made in the early and mid-20th century before. It seems impossible to turn back the clock, however.