French Suite No. 5 in G Major

It might be invidious to favour one French Suite over the remaining five, but BWV 816 has long stolen a popular march over its siblings. And with good reason. It seeks out scintillating sparkle at any opportunity; and like the collection’s other suites, dispenses with an opening prelude to take to the dance floor without further ado. The traditional sequence of dances discloses a beguiling “Allemande”, a “Courante” that cuts quite the dash; and a “Sarabande” that, if less searching than its cousins in the English Suites, is of a piece with BWV 816’s lighter mood. After an elegantly playful “Gavotte” and bracing “Bourrée”, Bach inserts a “Loure”, originally a Normandy folk dance whose idiosyncratic rhythmic profile had found favour in the French ballet. Almost the only surviving example in Bach’s output, it provides a moment of calm before the storm: a “Gigue”, one of his most exhilarating, that for all the high spirit is strictly organised along fugal lines, and with unstoppable chutzpah turns the theme upside down at half time.