This is Philippe Herreweghe’s third commercial recording of the Mass in B minor in 23 years and, unlike many conductors who serially return to cornerstone pieces, his finest to date. Collegium Vocale Gent established its Bachian credentials for glowing homogeneous restraint and soft-hued refinement in the 1988 reading (for Virgin), only to pursue a form of routine luxuriance in their Harmonia Mundi version eight years later.

If the original Virgin recording has its share of vocal and instrumental wrinkles, much of its durable delicacy and poise returns in the new account, especially in capturing the ‘daily bread’ of the ritual narrative of the Mass with luminosity of line; now, the stakes are considerably higher and there is a maturity in the vision which is immediately evident in the opening ‘Kyrie’. It’s a performance of beautifully calibrated dynamics, inner elegance and promising future mysteries.

Surveying the complete discography of the Mass reveals how few performances transport the listener into each contained world – be it a Gloria or ‘Crucifixus’ – while managing the long-term challenge of an evolving, not driven momentum. Bach may have assembled the Mass as a single entity in his final years but this is a work which the composer left without a performance ‘in toto’, and perhaps not even one ‘in mind’. A lot is left to judicous imagination.

Herreweghe is a master of when to fill the sails and when to trim them, especially in the large ensemble movements but also across the piece. The ‘Et in terra pax’ may appear a little laid-back compared to the driven intensity (in very different ways) of Andrew Parrott and Karl Richter but as the huge Gloria unfolds, the kaleidoscope of formal and textural possibility always allows for special devotional intimacies to emerge. The ‘Domine Deus’ is, apart from an intermittently flat Dorothee Mields, an exquisite example of how the interweaving worlds of instruments and voices create a ‘oneness’ of Father and Son.

Atmosphere is ultimately what places Herreweghe’s new reading in the higher echelons. The solo set pieces may not all reach the same high level of the wonderfully rich ‘Quonium’ (the bassoons sounding like grumpy old men), a radiant ‘Et in Spiritum’ from the perennial Peter Kooij and Thomas Hobbs’s touching Benedictus but most compel the listener to discern, at the very least, the multi-layered musical, liturgical and expressive depth of Bach’s supreme masterpiece. The opening ‘Credo’ is portrayed as a mathematical proof, a timeless constellation of glistening canti firmi, while the ‘Et incarnatus’ and ‘Crucifixus’ see Herreweghe in his element, juxtaposing the purple of the Roman rite with the adopted figural mysteries of his indigenous forbears. The ‘Confiteor’ is irresistible.

This account is one of the most consistent in recent years, though without quite the engaging exultance (the volley of D major choruses from the ‘Et exspecto’ are only impressively efficient), risk and poetic ambition of Frans Brüggen’s first recording (for Philips). Brüggen sprinkles magic especially in his handling of the registral connections between movements and some brilliant inspirational turns. While the balance favours the instruments for him, they can seem subdued for Herreweghe or non-existent: no list of players in the booklet is something of travesty in the circumstances of this great ensemble piece.