Threading its way through the maze of European cantata performances in the past decade, a new series quietly appears on the radar. Montreal Baroque has already released two discs celebrating the Feasts of St John the Baptist and St Michael, and now these three great cantatas meet in their respective Marian guises.

Eric Milnes’s readings are rather less radical in their gestural and declamatory point-making than the booklet-writer Bruce Haynes suggests we might expect. The great Visitation cantata Herz und Mund inspires a straightforward, buoyant and luminous account with a vigorous and well blended ensemble (one-to-a-part chorus) whose only oddity is to perform “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring” almost twice as fast in its initial appearance.

The Montreallers allow Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern to ring with splendid fervour and this is where the outstanding recorded sound allows the singers to appear from within the belly of the ensemble. How refreshing also, in a reduced configuration for chorus, to hear a countertenor in Matthew White who knows when to fly and when to harness his ripe timbre to best effect.

Ich habe genug, on the other hand, will divide Bachians not just on the quality of the singing – Stephan MacLeod is sympathetic and thoughtful with a tendency to sit under the note – but the jumpy and contrived rhetorical pointings in the opening aria. Far more affecting is “Schlummert ein” where the lullaby is gracefully conveyed and the orchestra warmly projected. This is a version which just fails to make quite enough of an impression in a highly competitive field, the solo singing generally less distinguished than the corporate movements.