We have come to expect Emma Kirkby to produce her customary wit, articulation and stylistic intelligence at the drop of a hat, but in some of her recent work she has not sounded as relaxed and assured as she does here. With the capable (and steadily improving) choir of Cantillation and the Orchestra of the Antipodes, Kirkby sounds at ease in nonchalantly navigating some treacherously difficult passagework.

Kirkby's previous recording of Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen was a landmark of the early-1980s period-instrument boom (and one of her rare collaborations with John Eliot Gardiner; Philips, 4/85). This new rendition does not match the spontaneous brilliance of its predecessor, owing to less communicative orchestral playing. However, it is pleasing to hear some of Bach's sunniest virtuoso arias for soprano alongside Handel's radiant second setting of Laudate pueri (Rome, 1707), in which Kirkby sounds like she is having fun again.

Vivaldi's fine Magnificat featured here is one of three extant settings; this one might have been created for the influential music patron Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome. Cantillation's singing of Vivaldi's counterpoint is pure and neat but the competent orchestra does not quite offer the sense of gesture that this strongly rhetorical music demands. To round things off, the performers tackle two movements from William Hayes's ode The Passions (Oxford, c1750). This tantalising glimpse of Hayes's competent choral writing and a graceful solo aria make me wish that ABC had been brave enough to record the entire ode instead.