Collectors will recall that Ton Koopman’s complete Bach cantata series hit the buffers in 2000, with Warner withdrawing its support after 12 of the 22 volumes had been released on their Erato label. Thanks to Koopman’s enterprise – not unlike John Eliot Gardiner’s similar recourse to found a record label – the remaining cantatas were recorded and released on his own Challenge Classics.

These “themed” reissues (an “Ascension” disc has already appeared – 9/08) provide an imaginative means of establishing key performances in an attractive format; not every Bach lover will want every last note and there is much to be said for collating works from across the cycles and relishing the composer’s exhaustive response to seasonal characteristics – be they the extroversion of Town Council Elections, the cathartic New Year or the special high days of Whitsun.

These mostly grandiloquent works remind us of the most telling features of this inconsistently satisfying series. The Town Council Election cantatas (three of the extant examples) contain all the irresistible instrumental flair of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, with their luxuriant textures reflecting a demonstrable municipal presence in Leipzig. Much is written about the virtuoso work of the Monteverdi Choir in Gardiner’s Pilgrimage releases but these three discs celebrate the Amsterdam Baroque Choir’s particularly glowing and cultivated core with a thrilling edge, as in the movements from BWV120 and BWV171 which Bach reworked for the Mass in B minor. The Whitsun Cantatas are especially fine, not least an exceptionally poetic performance of Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, BWV68, yet the stile antico radiance of the chorus of BWV28 is perhaps even more wonderfully poised.

Enlightened lyricism is not always Koopman’s strongest suit, and solo arias often say rather less than the consolidated ensemble. If, therefore, the solo numbers are a little hit-and-miss, there is still much to admire: a ravishing “Heil und Segen” from Sandrine Piau in BWV120, Klaus Mertens’s suitably windswept “Heiligste Dreieinigkeit” and Deborah York’s characterful singing in “Mein glaubiges” in BWV68 (she also shines brilliantly in the opening of BWV28).

As I said in my original review (3/04), this perennial favourite finds more durable readings from Agnes Giebel for Fritz Werner and Arleen Augér for Helmuth Rilling; but overall these attractively compiled discs encourage listeners to revisit Koopman’s cantatas in a new light. The impression, on this evidence, is that the best material stands out brighter than ever.