The Neumeyer Consort have made only a handful of recordings, and this must count as their strongest statement of intent so far. They do a job decent enough for anyone coming new to these concertos to recognise them for the miracles they are, but do not really offer enough to compete with (to mention just some of the fine recordings of recent years) the English Baroque Soloists, the Dunedin Consort or Florilegium. Non-playing conductor Felix Koch clearly has a sense for stylish gestural articulation but seems unable to use it to inspire his performers as one might wish. The heavy leans on to the second note of the long-short-short oboe figures in the second movement of Concerto No 1 surely have the right idea but actually come across as laboured, and too often elsewhere there is an unsettling feeling of sluggishness – in the third movement of No 1, for instance, or the first movement of No 4. Strangely, it is not that any of the speeds seems slow in itself (indeed, the first movement of No 6 is unpleasantly fast); rather it feels as if the orchestra is not quite up with the game, not acting as a galvanised unit. Neither are they helped by a recording that lacks both depth and definition, leaving the horns too muffled in No 1, the recorders too prominent in No 4.

Hugo Reyne’s La Simphonie du Marais have been around longer but are associated more with French music than with Bach. Their new recording comes live from concerts in the Théâtre de Thalie in Montaigu, and therein lies its biggest problem: the sound is disturbingly boxy and dry. This is fine if you want to hear every contrapuntal strand (and, let’s face it, there is much to be said for that), but in many other ways it is an uncomfortable experience. This is a pity, because Reyne – who plays the recorder solos, as well as the flute part of No 5 on a D recorder (or voice flute) – is a thoughtful and sensitive musician well worth listening to. His ideas include recorders in strongly contrasted echo in the slow movement of No 4, a fast Minuet in No 1 and a first movement of No 6 that acquires aristocratic poise from what these days is a moderate tempo. Above all he creates what Neumeyer fails to – performances of communicated fellowship and joy, their magical influence revealed by the way the audience spontaneously join in the encore, Reyne’s own rather rustic arrangement of Jesu, joy of man’s desiring.