Bach’s seamless and undulating setting of Christ’s valediction to his disciples in BWV86, Wahrlich, wahrlich, ich sage euch, heralds Vol 25 of the Bach Pilgrimage, this time from Dresden and Sherborne Abbey. John Eliot Gardiner writes movingly about the sensibilities of performing Bach in Dresden: the danger of bringing coals-to-Newcastle to the composer’s city of dreams, and all underpinned by the heavy history of a ghastly night in 1945. The music-making, indeed, sounds a little edgy at times and yet, as so often with this series, the disarming immediacy of time and place brings its own rewards.

Stefan Loges is a probing singer in BWV86 but, timbrally, an acquired taste; yet Robin Tyson holds us spellbound in the layered conceits “Vergib, O Vater” from BWV87. If ever a cantata contained an other-wordly set-piece aria (unusually left to the last), it is this work. “Ich will leiden” (only acceptably sung by Steve Davislim) reveals how keenly Bach is arrested by the bittersweet imagery of Marianne von Ziegler’s libretto, as he is in the riotous – and wittily performed – duet from BWV97 about the disciple’s “mishaps”.

The two fine settings of Sie werden euch in den Bann (BWV44 and 183) constitute the majority of the Sherborne programme. These are far more consistently satisfying performances. If Joanne Lunn cannot quite assuage us after the terrifyingly graphic tribulations of BWV44, her “sun of gladness” Elysium brings some delectation in Bach’s (possibly) earliest cantata, BWV150, even if a number of corners would attract the producer’s attention in the studio. The Monteverdi Choir show all their characterful élan in this prescient little essay.

The second Sie werden (BWV183) is the pick of the crop in another von Ziegler text. From the most theatrical of openings, the committed Paul Agnew navigates his way expertly through one of Bach’s most extended and contemplative testaments of faith, “Ich fürchte nicht”. This may not be one of the strongest volumes but there are movements, such as this 10-minute scena, which would have had less impact in the studio.