Few, if any, of Bach's other cantatas seem to have occupied the composer's mind as much as Ich habe genug. Four versions survive, two of them for bass voice, one for soprano and one for mezzo-soprano. Nancy Argenta sings the soprano version which, alone of the four, abandons the obbligato oboe for a transverse flute. This setting post-dates, by about four years, the first performance in Leipzig in 1727 for the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen!, another Leipzig cantata, was first sung in 1730 on the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, while Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity is an altogether earlier piece dating from 1714, the year in which Bach was elevated to the post of Konzertmeister at Weimar.
All these works are top-flight examples of Bach's genius in this medium and it would be hard to find a more tenderly expressive soprano to perform them than Nancy Argenta. Phrases are lovingly and affectingly shaped and she is attentive to details in the texts, both musical and literary. In these and other matters too, she receives excellent support from her obbligato partners, the flautist Lisa Beznosiuk (No. 82) the oboist Paul Goodwin, and the bass violist Sarah Cunningham (No. 199), the trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins, and the violinists Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen and Monica Huggett who also directs Ensemble Sonnerie. Only in the concluding ''Alleluia'' of Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen! did I feel at all uncomfortable. Surely its pulse should bear closer relationship to the earlier part of the movement than it is allowed to here.
Throughout the cantatas on this disc the performance level is outstandingly high, indeed, it would seem from all that I have so far said that I had found all that I could wish for. Yet I sensed an expressive coolness from time to time, a striving for tonal perfection at the expense of musical warmth. The issue is a subjective one and the suppression of anything in the way of expressive fervour is, I know, very much the taste of the time in performing music of this period. But I should like to feel the stamp of these performers' personalities on the music more than I did on this occasion
Readers can rest assured, however, that there is a wealth of music-making on the disc which is richly rewarding. On a personal note, I am sorry that in No. 199 it was decided to opt for Bach's later substitution of a viola da gamba to accompany the beautiful chorale, ''Ich Dein betrubtes Kind'', rather than the viola of the Weimar versions, one of only two instances in the entire canon where it appears in an obbligato role.'