Two favourite Bach cantatas for bass voice sung by Christoph Prégardien, one of the most respected lyric tenors of his generation, and performed with an exquisitely sensitive Baroque orchestra, Le Concert Lorrain. Intrigued? You should be. It’s a programme based around works likely written for Johann Christoph Lipsius, who studied law in Leipzig during the 1730s, and in his notes Michael Maul suggests that this singer’s talent particularly inspired Bach. Certainly these two cantatas, linked by their themes of death, hope and comfort, have earned a rightfully prominent place in our modern concert life, as Lindsay Kemp recently wrote (Collection, A/23). The album opens with the extended Sinfonia to Cantata No 42, Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats, which has a joyful, congratulatory feel and, in this performance, a particularly fabulous bassoon trill. There is a riot of sprightly playing here: a great Bachian balance of exuberance and sublimity.

Of the two cantatas that follow, No 56, Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, is pleasant enough but Prégardien labours several melismatic passages in a way that sounds tired rather than expressive. Having said that, I was gripped by the stunning recitative where Jesus boards a ship and crosses over to his own city, as a metaphor for life’s voyage, accompanied by a beautiful rippling cello figure. This is a live recording made in the Stadtkirche St Peter und Paul, Weimar, but to my ear it fails to reliably capture the communicative intensity of performance. Overall I much prefer the consistent warmth of Matthias Goerne with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Gottfried von der Goltz (Harmonia Mundi, 2017).

Cantata No 82, Ich habe genug, fares better, largely due to Stephan Schultz’s subtly dancelike opening tempo. I particularly enjoyed the second aria, ‘Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen’ (‘Go to sleep, weary eyes’), which, despite lying low, contains some of the finest singing on this album: Prégardien spins deliciously unflustered phrases that have both direction and purpose. But in the opening aria he surprised me with his occasional stabby articulation – far too emphatic for my taste. I yearn for the feeling of resignation I heard many years ago in Nancy Argenta’s long, languid phrases and the dusky obbligato flute of Monica Huggett’s Ensemble Sonnerie (Erato, 12/94).

The St Matthew Passion aria ‘Mache dich’, towards the end of this album, is certainly worth the wait, however. Here I’ll take all the oaky gravitas that Prégardien can muster and applaud super playing from the ensemble.