Johann Gottfried Müthel was the last pupil of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. He was present at the master’s deathbed, and he performed the funeral services, taking over the duties of the deceased Cantor. Mühtel’s music (“full of novelty, taste and grace” according to the great art historian and traveller Charles Burney) is of a wide variety: his Organ Fantasias are imposing, monumental and substantial, his chorale preludes offer intimate meditations on the chorale texts, all of it written in a highly original, dynamic musical language full of contrasts and instrumental virtuosity.

The last decade of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st centuries have produced an array of astonishingly gifted countertenors who continue to set new standards of excellence and reveal possibilities for male singers performing in the traditional range of women who haven't been heard since the days of the castrati. Iestyn Davies doesn't have the spectacular instrument of some of the most dazzling countertenors of his generation but in his more modest way, he is no less impressive. His voice is pure, without a trace of the hollow hootiness that was once characteristic so many countertenors, and is absolutely secure and full from the bottom to the top of his range.

Nuria Rial and Lothar Odinius are the stars of the show. Rial has a fine voice, and excellent diction, and her text expression is mostly very good. The arias 'Pious orgies' and 'O liberty, thou choicest treasure' are two examples. She also performs the recitatives in a truly declamatory style. A particularly telling example of her treatment of the text is the delightful aria 'So shall the lute and harp awake' (act 3). Lothar Odinius shows the same qualities, and I was especially impressed with his differentiated performance of the coloratura passages in his arias. Like Nuria Rial he performs the recitatives very well. The aria 'Call forth thy pow'rs' (act 1) and the aria with chorus 'Sound an alarm' (act 2) are particularly well done.