The unique selling point of these Bach Solo Cello Suites from US baroque cellist William Skeen (whose various hats include being principal cellist with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Voices of Music and a founding member of the period-instrument New Esterházy Quartet) is an attention-grabbing one: that while for the first five suites he uses his standard historic instrument (a Giovanni Grancino from 1725), for the Sixth Suite he instead plays an anonymously made 1680s Italian five-string violoncello piccolo, the suite having been originally conceived for a five-string instrument. This instrument, with its additional high E string, certainly reveals an intriguing sound as No 6’s Prelude music slips into the tenor clef, delivering a charmingly stringily twangy, almost metallic tone to its resonance. Also noticeable is that its overall tone’s richness belies its smaller, narrower dimensions. Equally noticeable, but not alluded to in any of the accompanying literature, is that the suites are programmed to run not sequentially but No 1, No 5, No 4, No 3, No 2, No 6 – which is surprising in the context of Skeen’s point in his booklet note about how ‘perfectly presented’ the collection is in its ordering, moving as it does from ‘simplest’ to ‘most intricate and challenging’ (and of course the original ordering has the high Suite No 6 in bright D major follow the low Fifth Suite, whose C minor darkness Bach further emphasised by the scordatura tuning of its bottom string a tone lower than standard).

Studio-recorded with brightly intimate immediacy, Skeen’s Grancino comes across as richly, gruffly mahogany-toned down below, with a similar harder, brighter ring to its upper registers as heard from him on the violoncello piccolo. It’s sensitively phrased and voiced, with the odd tucked ornament and thought-through dynamic contrasts, and sometimes with quite an intense-toned push to his up-bows. Tempos and articulation are comparatively stately if compared to brisker, more airborne offerings from the likes of Steven Isserlis, Bruno Philippe and Jean-Guihen Queyras, courantes in particular; although Skeen’s less virtuoso approach is personable, with plenty of rhythmic energy to his dances (gigues really bounce) and reflectiveness to his slower movements.

If it’s a five-string Sixth Suite you’re after, though, Philip Higham (Delphian, A/15) has more filigree airborne freedom and light and shade. For sheer range of tone and expression, Steven Isserlis’s recording (Hyperion, 7/07) sounds as supremely wonderful today as ever. The contrasting readings of Bruno Philippe (Harmonia Mundi, 6/22) and Henrik Dam Thomsen (OUR, 10/24) are elegantly, effortlessly voiced, multicoloured and ever-evolving. Essentially, in a crowded market, this isn’t going to be knocking any of the top period, modern or combined-set-up readings off their perches.