Pascal Vigneron has devised a performing edition of Bach’s Art of Fugue where the ordering of pieces and choices of timbre and instrumentation draw philosophical and numerological inspiration from the late musicologist Jacques Chailley’s vision of the work. He partitions the pieces between brass quintet, wind ensemble and solo organ, combines organ and brass or organ and winds for three of the four double fugues, and brings organ, winds and brass together for the final, unfinished fugue.

For the most part Vigneron’s numeric ordering bucks convention; to locate the wonderful three-voice fugue most of us know as Contrapunctus VIII, you have to jump to Contrapunctus XIX on disc two. I also sense that theoretical premises largely govern phrasing and tempo. For example, the expositions of the fugues commonly known as Nos 10 and 11 are played very slowly on the organ. The subsequent sections continue at twice the speed, with other instruments joining in. Vigneron also dots Bach’s undotted rhythms in Contrapunctus IV (labelled No 2 here) in order for it to function as the ‘inversus’ of the march-like Contrapunctus II (No 1 here).

However, all the concept in the world won’t help you get through such undistinguished performances, whose general drabness is abetted by resonant sound that place the brass and winds in a perspective akin to looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The wind ensemble blend is mellifluous to the point where the contrapuntal lines fade in and out of an ambient halo better suited to Brian Eno than to JS Bach. Brass intonation and tone quality is erratic (disc 1, track 7, for example), while organist Jean Galard’s enervated, academic, joyless schlep through Contrapunctus VI makes harpsichordist Helmut Walcha’s sobriety sound festive by comparison. In short, this release was not designed to win new audiences over to The Art of Fugue.