Bach’s instrumentations evolved over the decades: modified by his own voracious search for new colours as well as his skilful assimilation of the latest advances in instrument building.

The three great cantatas in tonight’s programme demonstrate this metamorphosis perfectly. ‘Actus tragicus’, the earliest, and many would say the greatest of all his funeral cantatas, uses a beautiful 17th-century scoring which includes recorders and violas da gamba, whereas the later Leipzig cantatas ‘Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit’ and ‘Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin’ favour the 18th-century obbligato instruments: flute, oboe and cello.