On March 25, 1725, Bach celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation and Palm Sunday with a special cantata, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (“How beautifully shines the morning star”), a work of breathtaking atmosphere and delicate ardour. Masaaki Suzuki’s poised grandeur brings considerable richness to this marvellous score, a sparkling duo of solo violins offset deftly against the full ivory texture of high horns and low oboes in the chorus, and joined by top-drawer solo singing. If Gardiner brings more immediate emotion and Koopman a little more élan, Suzuki captures the moment with sustained warmth and intensity of a kind so compellingly realised in Fritz Lehmann’s 1951 performance (Decca – nla).

Equally striking in this volume of pieces from the unfinished chorale-cantata cycle (the second “Jahrgang”) is the graphic immediacy of Bach Collegium Japan; there have been occasions recently when rhetorical projection has become rather too smoothed over, neutral and objectivised. Not so in Nos 126 and 127, the former leaving no stone unturned in its spiky outbursts (trumpet fanfares in wrathful and unusual minor keys) to reflect the “murderous intent of Pope and Turks”! This performance is as unequivocal as Fritz Werner’s (Erato, 1/05).

The evocative Quinquagesima work Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott is a pre-Passiontide lament of sublime quality and, again, Suzuki hits the mark with heightened characterisation and, especially, meticulous care with “Die Seele ruht”. There are not many extended arias here but this masterpiece for soprano, solo oboe and two punctuating recorders and pizzicato continuo (for “Sterbeglocken” – knells of death) is exquisitely performed by Carolyn Sampson, rivalling Sybilla Rubens’s star turn for Koopman. All in all, a disc to be cherished.