Bach: Overture In The French Style, Sarabande Con Partite, English Suite No. 6

There's so much to love about this Bach keyboard album. Namely attractive artwork, glowing sound, and an intelligent program clearly chosen by the artist.

And there's the pianist himself, Nils Anders Mortensen, who I'd only previously registered as a skilled, sensitive accompanist. It's rare to find an artist with such a peripheral presence on social media. Mortensen doesn’t have a website, and the sole photo in Lawo’s booklet shows an appealingly disheveled figure distantly clambering over some rocks.

Mortensen’s Bach is very, very good. He opens this solo album with the Overture in the French Style, written a decade after the better known French Suites. The opening flourish is like a call to arms, the ensuing faster section thrilling in terms of how Mortensen cranks up the tension. You daren’t breathe until he hits the final B major chord. Mortensen shrewdly gauges the mood of each subsequent dance movement, the Gavotte, and Passepied both toe-tappers here. And the little Echo movement which closes the work is brilliantly done, the dynamic contrasts ear-tickling.

Bach’s Sarabande con partite is a theme with 11 variations, the Sarabande dispatched with grace and the faster variations exhilarating. We're on more familiar ground with the last of the six English Suites. Mortensen’s Sarabande is heart-stopping. Especially when compared with the energy he injects into the faster movements, the final Gigue’s twists and turns brilliantly negotiated.

There's no shortage of pianists who can play Bach convincingly, but Mortensen deserves a place among the best of them