This is an altogether stunning album. Ryo Terakado performs on a Giovanni Grancino violin made in 1690, while Fabio Bonizzoni plays a two-manual Flemish harpsichord made by Willem Kroesbergen after Couchet. Together, the combination is captivating. Take the Largo that sits achingly at the heart of the Sonata in B flat, Wq77. The sense of space the duo give each other is mesmeric; Terakado and Bonizzoni answer each other with poise and attentiveness, yet their phrases are held together with a shared sense of breath and bloom. Bach’s haunting melodies are given time to speak, yet the delivery is never staged or over-deliberate. In the moments of imitation, the exquisitely tempered tuning of the harpsichord becomes particularly apparent.

Terakado’s sound is extraordinary, particularly for its flexibility in thickness. Melody is never sung purely for being sung, and his clarity of sound also trades in mystery – it’s remarkably special. What makes all this even more astonishing is, if I’ve heard the word on the Baroque grapevine correctly, that Terakado uses Japanese fishing wire for his E string. To conjure such enchantment out of a material so ostensibly utilitarian makes me smile (but then again, pulling a rainbow trout out of a lake is also rather magical).

Bonizzoni opens the Sonata in B minor, Wq76, in uncluttered profusion. His precision of grammar in such flamboyant solo passages is stylishly judged. When Terakado takes over in melody, his support becomes even more beguiling – varied in articulation and copiously colourful.

These are stunning sonatas, which I wish were performed and recorded more, so I’m glad that this superb album from Terakado and Bonizzoni bolsters other excellent interpretations from Podger and Bezuidenhout (Channel Classics, 10/23) as well as a non-period recording from Waley-Cohen and Baillieu (Signum, 12/19). My only quibble is the overall ordering of the pieces. The Fantasia in F sharp minor, Wq80, is remarkable in its strangeness, but as an opening for the album it is top-heavy in CPE’s idiosyncrasies. Listeners would potentially be better prepared to engage with its rhetoric if it was sandwiched between the Sonatas in C minor and B minor.