Reinhard Goebel is a seasoned navigator of the indigenous musical landscape from which JS Bach’s incomparable imagination and ability emerged in the early­18th century. The great oak tree of Bach family activity has been a happy hunting­ground for Musica Antiqua Köln‚ most notably with seminal recordings in 1986 of cantatas by Bach’s distinguished forebears (the Bach family before Johann Sebastian – Archiv‚ 2/87). Now they return to the theme with a more eclectic programme of so­called Bachiana‚ derived partly from a recent discovery by the celebrated Bach scholar‚ Christoph Wolff‚ of the old Berlin Singakademie archive which was moved to Kiev in 1945. Given that the disc is dedicated to Wolff‚ Goebel’s note is strangely unforthcoming about the individual circumstances of each work’s physical provenance‚ although this fails to detract from a profoundly satisfying exposé of Bach’s forebears. Heinrich and Johann Michael Bach (tentatively identified by Goebel as the true ‘Signr Pagh’) represent the early end – grandfather and father respectively of his cousin and first wife‚ Maria Barbara – with typically concentrated and sectional mid­century instrumental pieces. A more distant branch is represented in the Suite and Concerto by Johann Ludwig. He was a near contemporary of Bach and one whose vocal music the great Cantor wrote out and used extensively in Leipzig. Such was Johann Sebastian’s voracious appetite for Bachiana. There is hardly the space to do justice to the range of musical material here and yet Goebel and his colleagues embrace each idiom with the authoritative flair of familiar and eager executants. Both Johann Ludwig pieces reveal illuminating characterisation through confident‚ rich­hewn string textures – exposed fully in the grandiloquent Suite in G whose later stages‚ especially‚ resemble Telemann in his most fluent Darmstadt Suites. The Concerto is Vivaldian‚ not a great work‚ even when stripped of its 19th­century visage‚ but utterly convincing when so invigoratingly performed. Johann Christoph Bach (JM’s brother) is the one from the earlier generations whose waters run deep. His Aria Eberliniana is an accomplished set of keyboard variations which‚ if not exactly exuberant‚ arrests the senses with its noble sweep – expertly divulged by harpsichordist‚ Léon Berben. Fittingly‚ Johann Sebastian Bach as the apogee sits it out until the end: a concerto reconstruction from the Easter Oratorio which is fun if not altogether plausible. Overall then‚ an enterprising and highly recommendable Bachfest.