Back in 2017, British countertenor Iestyn Davies teamed up with regular collaborators Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo for a recital of Bach solo cantatas, including the much-loved BWV170 Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust. The results were Gramophone Award-winningly good.

It’s not marketed as Volume II, but this new recording from the same forces is the follow-up, completing the sequence of Leipzig cantatas from 1726 – probably composed, Richard Wigmore’s sleeve notes remind us, for “an outstandingly gifted boy alto” – with BWV169 Gott soll allein mein Herze haben and BWV35 Geist und Seele wird verwirret.

Davies’ voice – still boyish-pure and agile but animated with a man’s artistry and sophistication – is an ideal vehicle for works whose demands are staggering. The beauty of these accounts, particularly Gott soll allein, is undeniable. But it’s always tempered by expressive restraint, balanced (like the texts themselves) between stern Lutheran piety and rapture. It’s a conflict that’s thrillingly dramatized in the aria Stirb in mir, whose text might speak of the “empty pleasures” and “depraved...