Classic CD: Luca Guglielmi, Bach in Montecassino

Founded in 2013, Robert King's Vivat label is making an impact above and beyond its modest catalogue.

There is a story behind its latest release, Bach in Montecassino, a title that could conjure surreal images of the Baroque composer as a German soldier staving off the Kiwis and other troops in one of the historic battles of World War II.

In fact, we are taken back to 1766 when German musician Friedrich Wilhelm Rust crossed the Alps, taking some organ music by Bach to the monks at the Abbey of Monte Cassino.

The celebrated building, and its organ, did not survive the 1944 conflict, but Bach's manuscripts did, many in the library of composer Padre Martini.

Luca Guglielmi is one of Italy's foremost organists, a man who can count Jordi Savall and Cecilia Bartoli as colleagues.

This CD has him playing these Bach works on the 1749 organ at the Chiesa di San Nicolao in the town of Alice Castello.

Guglielmi is known for his imaginative concert programming and has put this disc together with curatorial expertise.

Two pages into its well-appointed booklet, you can check out the specifications of the San Nicolao instrument. Its single 54-note keyboard and 26 stops deliver a staggering array of colours.

A few years ago, Guglielmi was on Boston's WGBH, storming through Bach's Chromatic Fantasia on a two-manual Dowd harpsichord. Launching this CD with the same piece, waves of shivering chromaticism billow into lofty ecclesiastical recesses.

For some reason he omits the accompanying fugue for this and another Fantasia, but fugal amends are made with a magisterial Fuga sopra il Magnificat.

Sometimes it seems that Bach could hardly write a tune without having it stalked by its own echoes, culminating in the mighty six-part fugue that crowns The Musical Offering.

Guglielmi has searched out a real treasure in the Four Duetti. With only two strands in the weave, the Italian embraces the heady chromatics of the first while the third has a liquid-toned buoyancy that creates the illusion of a minuet being danced.

Verdict: "Bach crosses the Alps to enjoy a simpatico Italian styling"