The pairing of Bach’s E flat Magnificat and Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum resonates surprisingly on several levels, although these giants of north German music never met. Both are occasional festive works marking an important moment for each composer. The former was Bach’s first Christmas present to Leipzig on his arrival there in 1723 (complete with seasonal laudes, interpolations which Bach removed for his perennial D major version). The latter was composed a decade earlier to mark the end of the War of Spanish Succession: skilfully negotiated in Utrecht, the outcome was especially favoured in London, and Handel, ever the man to catch a mood, tore into Purcell’s own Te Deum as a model for his inaugural sacred work in English, which was performed at St Paul’s Cathedral.

L’Oiseau-Lyre released recordings of these two pieces within months in the late 1970s with the Academy of Ancient Music and Christ Church Cathedral Choir under Simon Preston (1/80, 12/80). If the ink still felt wet on those pages back then (even with the Oxford choir in its pomp), the musical fabric offered here is driven by a level of fluency, refinement and consistency that defines its era. Justin Doyle’s fine attention to detail and balance is instantly revealed in the light and supple opening of the Magnificat, the oboes affectingly prominent and the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin feeding off a lithe vocalised orchestral palette with impressive results.

The Bach is perhaps the less settled of the two works in its over-arching impact. Each movement is projected as a discreet vignette, open and characterful but curiously unconnected to its succeeding movement. The long spaces between tracks don’t help (sometimes with distracting ambient noise such as at the end of ‘Vom Himmel hoch’). The highlights include a delicious ‘Et misericordia’ with Alex Potter and Kieran Carrel, the latter’s alluring and fluid tenor finding an especially comfortable home in a finely chiselled and ringing ‘Deposuit’. ‘Fecit potentiam’ fairly glistens in Doyle’s effective accentuation, although the choir too often feels recessed elsewhere.

Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum generally tells a different story. Collective shoulders are opened; the rhetorical gestures are urgent and organic, anticipating happier times ahead. Doyle chooses his speeds judiciously, and the blend of control and abandon throughout is highly measured. There is also a gratifying ease to how the soloists and choir combine in this unashamedly grandiloquent liturgical celebration. Likewise, Doyle draws tender and glowing contrasts in ‘The glorious company’, touching fragility in the madrigalian passage ‘when thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death’, and then in the heart-stopping ‘We believe thou shalt come to be our judge’ – all leading to a denouement that reflects both political triumph and Handel’s uncannily quick command of English emotions and tastes. A tale of two cities and, in performance terms, London prevails.