Imaginative programming lies at the heart of Jos van Veldhoven’s series with Capella Figuralis and the Netherlands Bach Society. They have already released outstanding discs of 17th-century vocal music under the epithets of ‘Saints and Sinners’, ‘Angels and Shepherds’ and ‘Love and Lament’. The latest inhabits the intensely expressive world of the German mid-Baroque, a rich tapestry of emotive musical devotion in which organists worked ‘off piste’ as vocal composers. Buxtehude stands at the apex of this tradition before Bach but his forebears – including his tantalisingly unprolific father-in-law, Franz Tunder – absorbed a Monteverdian blueprint with a remarkable sensibility of their own.

The solo motets here have clearly been chosen on grounds of quality rather than pragmatism. The results are profoundly affecting. Johannette Zomer is the main protagonist and sings with such range of inflection and commitment that one almost feels that the works were in her blood by right. The texts, as so often with Lutheran poetry, are laden with imagery which requires variation of colour and spiritual immersion but instinctive risks need to be taken and Zomer does just that. She acts as the brooding narrator in Weckmann’s extraordinary work, Wie liegt die Stadt so Wuste, which depicts the plagued ravages of Hamburg in 1663 by manipulating and reordering The Lamentations of Jeremiah to devastating effect. So many performances of this work objectivise the daring harmonic shifts and textural agony with good manners. Zomer’s compelling immediacy and the nobility of Peter Harvey’s reflective contribution complement each other exceptionally.

Death (for all its ugliness, it has its beauty, too) suits the Teutonic temperament and these works reveal the power of clammy counterpoint, purple harmony and searing melodic direction. Again, Zomer sits as ‘prima inter pares’ and tenderly within the rich string palette in Tunder’s dignified setting of An Wasserflüssen Babylon, a chorale of unutterable poignancy which is beautifully controlled. The rhetorical commentary of the strings finds its greatest lyricism in the later generation of Buxtehude as it irradiates his texts with a kind of incremental structure of almost imperceivable momentum. O Gottes Stadt is a master- piece – as are so many of Buxtehude’s under-rated chorale works – and Zomer exquisitely pitches this difficult music. How astonishing the contrast of despair to joy where the motif of ‘I leap into thy Kingdom’ turns on a sixpence.

There are fine performances of Christian Ritter’s O amantissime, a deeply refined Italianate cantata, and Buxtehude’s valedictory chaconne Herr, wenn ich nur dich habe. A graceful sense of eventide is conveyed to bring this outstanding recital to a close – one whose range of expression should be enjoyed by audiences beyond the early music fraternity.