The 18th-century violist Carl Friedrich Abel was the son of Bach’s cellist at Cöthen and a close friend of Johann Christian Bach, with whom he later appeared in London in the celebrated Bach- Abel Concerts (1774-82). Among his other friends was the painter Thomas Gainsborough, a passionate amateur violist, whose portrait of Abel hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Gainsborough was the owner of the Drexel Manuscript, containing 29 pieces for solo bass viol.

We are treated on this CD to all but one – a fragment. Paolo Pandolfo has arranged them, appropriately, into two suites in D major and one in D minor, concluding with two pieces in A major. Anyone familiar with the elder Bach’s Solo Cello Suites will immediately appreciate the influences as well as the originality and relative modernity of Abel’s music. Pandolfo, considered by many to be the finest violist of our day, has already recorded several of the Cello Suites on the viol. But whereas the Suites present the modern player with awkward challenges (the Sixth in particular), Abel’s music (like that of Marais) is supremely crafted for his instrument.

In Pandolfo’s hands, Abel’s music is highly communicative – packed with ideas, oft-repeated and always varied. His strong sense of overall form, both in freely expressed (preludes and slow movements) and more structured movements (dances and rondos), allows him to indulge in dynamic moments of silence, heightening the impression of monologue, and even dialogue. Technically wondrous, few could perform these delightful pieces with the skill, eloquence and sheer panache Pandolfo brings to them.