Anglo-Italian harpsichordist Giulia Nuti has a longish discography as a lively and quick-fingered continuo player but this is only her third solo album, following two releases of French Baroque. For the not inconsiderable matter of Bach’s Partitas she uses a French-style harpsichord based on a 1751 instrument by Jean-Henri Hemsch, into which the maker Christian Kuhlmann has introduced the experimental innovation of a second soundboard, which, he says, sounds ‘more expressive and clear, and acquires an extraordinary treble particularly suited to contrapuntal writing such as that of JS Bach’. It is hard not to agree with him about the clarity, or to note that the richly resonant bass typical of French harpsichords is somehow reined in, allowing the treble to ring out and create a pervading atmosphere of sweetness and delicacy.

Of course, Nuti’s playing has something to do with it as well. Like Bach himself, she clearly believes a harpsichord should sing, which she achieves by holding notes down that little bit longer and making a subtly controlled legato her standard. Unsurprisingly this works well for the ornately turned lines of allemandes, sarabandes and the Sinfonia of the Third Partita, but not so much in the quicker, spikier courantes, gigues and jaunty galanteries, where more crispness and a few shorter notes could have led a sprightlier dance. It must be her choice, however, because the furiousness of the Fifth’s Gigue is perfectly articulated, and elsewhere too Nuti’s playing suggests that she has the ability to draw from a harpsichord whatever she likes, from rattling brilliance (as in the hemi-demisemiquaver flashes of the Sixth Partita’s Corrente) to the expressive depth of a truly French-sounding Fifth Sarabande beautifully enriched and teased out by rhythmic dislocations and additional ports de voix. I just wish she could also have found a wider range of articulations and embellishments; she has what seems almost an addiction to adding mordents and short trills that can elucidate but just as easily obscure a line (eg Menuet II of the First Partita), yet rarely attempts anything more lyrically elaborate. She might also have given more time to observe the music’s rhetorical and harmonic contours, for instance in the Sixth Partita’s Toccata and the Third’s Sarabande.

There is certainly skilful and precise harpsichord-playing here, but if you want more incident, variety and provocativeness you might well prefer Mahan Esfahani (Hyperion, 8/21), while for sheer wisdom and class Trevor Pinnock (Hänssler Classic, 8/00) still takes some beating – both won Gramophone Awards.