This disc, the first in a new series, exemplifies Sigiswald Kuijken’s highly selective and considered approach to Bach’s cantatas. By choosing a single cantata for each Sunday of the liturgical year, the works will be divided up over coming concert seasons, providing an alternative to the all-or-nothing nature of Gardiner’s Pilgrimage and the parallel marathons of Suzuki and Koopman.

Kuijken’s somewhat didactic introduction emphasises the structural sense of Bach’s textual understanding, interpretation and mastery of setting. How these priorities impart themselves in the performances can be admired in the subtlety of rhythmic accentuation, alongside a sympathetic humanist view which lovingly draws listeners into the prevailing conceit. This is certainly the case in a rhetorically committed Ich habe genug, bearing out Kuijken’s view that a lack of serious consideration of the texts “seems a deplorable self-imposed restriction”, and receiving a reading full of gentleness from Jan Van der Crabben.

In the other cantatas Kuijken espouses the one-to-a-part approach in the choruses. The results are persuasive since there is no point-making in La Petite Bande’s easy balance between voices and instruments. Some will miss the weightiness of a proper choir but, I suspect, Kuijken will select cantatas on this series where clarity and intimacy are primary considerations.

If No 178 contains some memorable movements (including Christoph Genz’s colourful “Schweig nur”), the bipartite No 102 is a far more remarkable work; Bach was clearly intrigued by the notion of penance in the substantial opening movement, and mezzo Petra Noskaiová responds with doleful and heartfelt melismas in “Weh der Seele”.

Overall this marks a refreshing alternative approach to the virtuoso homogeneity of recent cantata performance. Three more volumes follow soon.