Eagerly pursuing his exploration of Bach’s corpus for solo keyboard, Benjamin Alard focuses here on works associated with the composer’s first wife, Maria Barbara, and her untimely death in 1720.

This instalment therefore includes both the Inventions and Sinfonias, a collection of teaching pieces brimming with freshness and invention, and the prodigious French Suites, one of the peaks of Bach’s years in Cöthen.