As we head into the home straight of a project which started nearly 15 years ago, Masaaki Suzuki offers three works from 1726 whose history encapsulates the gradually fragmenting nature of Bach’s commitment to cantatas after three years of unyielding productivity. Add into the equation, also, the increasing problem of survival rate among the later cycles and we are entering a world of pieces often unclear of provenance.

However, both No 43 and No 88 are known quantities as cantatas written for Ascension Day and the Fifth Sunday after Trinity (July 21) of that year. The former is a remarkably effective edifice in two parts, starting with an extended choral fantasia whose portentous adagio then hurls us headlong into exultation, as God is “gone up with a shout”.

John Eliot Gardiner’s version crackles with greater dynamism than Bach Collegium Japan’s but Suzuki still establishes a firm, sonorous grandeur which proceeds, in the arias, towards a studied reflection of seasoned imagery. Here, even the fleet-of-foot tenor singing of “Ja tausendmal tausend” (“a thousand of thousands accompanies his chariot”) and the delicate panache brought to the famously fiendish trumpet obbligato in the bass aria cannot aspire to the character elsewhere.

Peter Kooij is at his very best in the deceptively hard and highly melismatic opening aria of No 88. This requires exceptional stamina, as the bass graphically tells of the miracle of the fisherman Simon, in a performance of commanding presence. It is matched also in the exquisitely refined chamber-like exchanges of the soprano and alto duo of Rachel Nicholls and Robin Blaze, though standard objectivity rather reigns in the other arias.

No 146 is a familiar enough piece, containing two movements from the D minor Concerto of Bach’s Weimar days. When it came into being as a cantata is less obvious but “Wir mussen” is astonishing not least for the transformation of the angular solo lines of the second movement of the concerto into a choral masterpiece as we seek, “through tribulation”, to enter the Kingdom.

Suzuki takes us on another luminous journey, as indeed does the organist (unclearly listed) in an invigorating and detailed reading of the opening Sinfonia. There is more immaculately judged work from Robin Blaze and memorably “tangy” wind dialogues in the fine soprano aria, “Ich säe meine Zähren”, to complete another successful addition to this assiduously conceived series.