It is uncertain whether any of Buxtehude’s oratorios have survived. The anonymous undated oratorio Wacht! Euch Zum Streit Gefasset Macht might be the sole exception. It was published under the inauthentic title Das Jüngste Gericht in 1939, and I recently gave a cautious recommendation to a version edited and conducted by Ton Koopman. Roland Wilson has plenty of expertise in music of the 17th century, and his small group of 10 singers sing with suppleness, flexibility and clarity, and seem much better balanced with the instrumental forces than Koopman’s larger and clumsier choir. Unlike Koopman’s starrier line-up of soloists, the members of La Capella Ducale make a commendable effort to convey a sense of theatre (in “Ich kann nicht mehr” Monika Mauch sounds like an inebriated Lotte Lenya, which rather suits the idea of the Evil Soul lamenting its drunken damnation). Wilson directs with lightness of touch and inflects subtle dancelike rhythms throughout. Lovers of Buxtehude’s vocal music will not hesitate if they hear the lovely clear choral singing and shapely passages from two violinists in the chorale “Ei, mein Perle, du werte Krohn”. Musica Fiata’s playing is consistently subtle and expressive, with notably excellent winds (recorders, cornets and trombones), and Wilson scores the instrumental parts as if it is a Venetian extravaganza.

Manfred Cordes and his ensemble Weser-Renaissance of Bremen eschew such instrumental variety, and instead use a scoring of only strings and continuo (which seems equally historically plausible). Some listeners will find the oratorio’s libretto long-winded and uneventful from a dramatic point of view, and Cordes gets around this arguable hurdle by cropping the oratorio down considerably. It is unlikely that serious devotees of 17th-century vocal music will be too faint-hearted to endure the whole thing, but there is no denying that the compressed version of the oratorio reduces what Cordes describes “pietistic ornateness that [is] difficult for us to appreciate today”. The singers, notably Harry van der Kamp and Hans-Jörg Mammel, are more declamatory than the lighter voices of La Capella Ducale. Weser-Renaissance deliver a beefy performance that seems a few degrees too abrasive and four-square compared to Wilson’s lightly Italianate approach, although there is an equally valid muscular resonance in Cordes’s interpretation.