“The momentum created by Bach’s extended melodic lines” is the avowed inspiration for the two new works here by jazz saxophonist Tim Garland, but his realisation of that characteristic as a performer is even more satisfying for those of us largely unfamiliar with the crossover between modern jazz and classical idioms. His ornamentation of BWV1059 is more daring than most oboe versions, ancient or modern, but always deftly voiced within Bach’s harmonic grammar and the legato peculiar to his instrument; only occasionally in fast movements does the pressure tell of attempting to fit too many notes within too few beats. He is placed well forward of the ensemble in a close but warm church acoustic; BWV1060 works less well because of the more diffuse recording in The Sage Gateshead, and the sense that Bradley Creswick’s solo violin belongs both to the body and style of the ensemble rather than complementing his saxophone partner.

Garland’s own concerto retains the harpsichord continuo but is most distinctively individual in the slow movement when it relinquishes both neo-Baroque flights of virtuosity and neoclassically Stravinskian jauntiness for a personally inflected lullaby with a solo part gently woven around the bar-lines. The placing of his two-movement Fantasia directly after a pert but slightly blank performance of Dumbarton Oaks only emphasises a dominant Stravinsky influence. Garland’s own music may better be appreciated in collaborations with Chick Corea and other luminaries on this British jazz label. As it stands, the album makes an elegant riposte to Reinhard Goebel, whose critique of old Bach performances reserved special contempt for Klemperer’s replacement of trumpet with saxophone in a 1946 Vox recording of the Second Brandenburg Concerto.