Concerto Köln celebrates 25 years with highly accomplished readings of Bach’s staple “orchestral” suites. Directed by three of its members (violinist Sylvie Kraus takes the lead in the big D major works), here is an ensemble whose textural landscape represents one of the most recognisable in period performance, not least for its technical consistency and a meticulous internal balance.

As you would expect, each of these invigorating works springs with balletic suavity and a ready instinct for gesture; embellishments are always exquisitely judged and speeds often surprising in the quixotic juxtaposition of fast and very fast. From the opening of Suites Nos 3 and 4 with trumpets and drums, there is also something demonstrably covered in the sound – where is the glistening edge to the saccadé rhythms? – and then one discovers that the prevailing French pitch of the time (around a=392) lowers the pitch a semitone from what one expects.

Such a practice would assume that some German courts adopted all things French and, in itself, may seem a small point; but it does require something of an aural adjustment for the listener, especially in the flute suite, No 2. However expertly stylised, the effective darkening of the timbre begs the soloist to respond with a richer interpretation, playing on the more elusive elements in the music, than we get in this rather pedestrian reading. The Polonaises clunk, the Menuet makes its generic point and the Badinerie chirps merrily.

Elsewhere, too, one admires Concerto Köln’s efficiency rather more than the personality of the music-making. I’ve rarely heard such motoric, heads-down bassoon playing in the Allegro of Suite No 1, a moto perpetuo epidemic which strips the music of its natural elegance and joie de vivre. I must also bridle at the sangfroid of the Air (on a G string) in the Third, for which lyricism is studiously avoided alongside an over-plotted harpsichord involvement. The breathless and inherent gracelessness of the C major Suite here had me running for Ton Koopman’s 1989 recording – a version which remains something of a yardstick.

There are many fine accounts of these state-of-the-art courtly extravaganzas and the most durable are those where grandeur and collective virtuosity are blended with affection, congenial asides and enough room to breathe. We can admire here, for example, the brilliant high jinks of the trumpets in Suite No 4 but there are few mysteries in this somewhat hectoring experience.