Many thanks to the list member who alerted us to the van Asperen recording of the French Suites on the 1738 Vater original. I have to say I find the recording quite revelatory. The sound is amazingly fundamental, with very little noise at the pluck (although one hears the click of the quill),?settling to pitch right away. The bass strikes me as amazingly lute-like, and the single 8' stops very vocal, but together forming a crisp, Italianate sound, with a fast decay. The sound of the front 8 alone with the back 8 ringing along sympathetically is ethereal. It occurs to me that we may think of the harpsichord as a necessarily bright-sounding instrument, but this recording proves this needn't be so.

Greg