J.S. BACH TRIO SONATAS immerses baroque music fans into not only how these sonatas must have sounded, on period instruments, but the delightful way they were often performed in daily life.

Bach’s great innovation, with the trio sonatas, was to combine their traditional three voices into a single keyboard. This was a tremendous musical adventure, for organ virtuosos and their fans.

But in the everyday, music-loving home, these pieces were often divided back up among whatever instruments and players you happened to have available to you.

If you didn’t happen to have an organ, but wanted to share this wonderful music with your talented friends, it would have sounded very much like this album.

The six trios on this disc were originally composed for solo organ, appearing in a collection of “Six Sonatas, or trios, for two keyboard manuals and pedal” that Bach compiled around 1730, during his tenure as cantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig.

Composed in three independent parts throughout, with an unusually active pedal part, the sonatas are in true Italianate trio-sonata texture, and many of the individual movements are known to have originated as works for chamber ensemble.

On this recording, the recorder plays the part assigned to the organist’s right hand, the violin that of the left hand, and the continuo team that of the pedals.