Bach knew a good thing when he heard it and Georg Böhm was one. Based in Luneburg (where Bach was, to all intents and purposes, a sixth-former at St Michael's School), Böhm had mastered the flamboyant keyboard styles prevalent in northern Germany while taking a particular interest in adapting French keyboard sensibility and technique to the high emotional stakes beloved of Germans. These discs are, above all, a celebration of sonority; you notice this in Böhm's splendid organ music too, where his command of the textural impact of strong harmonic movement has as much to offer as the actual progressions themselves.
Mitzi Meyerson brings considerable colour and suavity to these 11 Suites and the miscellaneous 'triptych' piece, the very original 'scena', Prelude, Fugue and Postlude (which Schumann described as an 'eerie caprice'). Playing on a responsive and lyrical 1998 double-manual harpsichord by Keith Hill, Meyerson homes in on the essential Affekt of each prelude and treads a fine line between those occasions when the specific dance is to be articulated and when it's plainly a servant to another expressive end. She's especially successful in the movements requiring incisive execution and portentous nobility. She does Böhm a great service here, and reminds us why Bach justly rated him in the top division of senior contemporaries.