Frederick the Great of Prussia, unbridled in politics and military strategy, had conservative tastes in music. CPE Bach did not, his music described as “a language of the passions that is unequivocally beholden solely to the unpredictability of the emotions” (Roman Hinke). Thus the relationship between monarch and court composer was often uncomfortable.

It was different in Hamburg, where Bach lived from 1768. His prescient art burgeoned in this city. But he had been officially appointed to ecclesiastical posts (Telemann’s successor as Cantor of the Johanneum Gymnasium and music director of the five main churches) for which, strangely, he had little experience; and he made do by supplementing the reuse or reworkings of his earlier music with the music of others. Wolfram Esslin, booklet annotator, believes that Bach had “done comparatively little independent writing of new compositions for Hamburg church music”.

No “language of the passions” here, it seems, yet these four Quartalsmusiken (“quarterly music” – for Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and Michaelmas), show signs of his innate nonconformism. Ludger Rémy’s analysis of the works is good; his musicians are of high calibre. There is nothing wrong with execution or recorded balance and the faint traces of distortion here and there aren’t serious. But Rémy isn’t always successful in translating concept into an acoustical reality, and fine insight vies with dispiritingly noncommittal responses. On the whole the recitatives – usually with organ – are the most consistently communicative because the soloists take individual responsibility. But in the bass recitative No 4 of H811, where unusually the strings enter part of the way through, Rémy melds in and offers matching support. His conducting is even finer in the succeeding tenor aria, again fully at ease with the string accompaniment. He allows music of this nature to flow but invariably stiffens to a metric gait when trumpets and timpani enter the fray, thus subduing many grand or joyful sections and tying them to the tyranny of the bar-line. The singers become routine too. Was the reactionary Frederick resting a warning hand on Rémy’s shoulder?