Baroque expressions of loss and longing mix with Bohemian lamentation, accompanied by a world premiere sparked by a chance discovery in an Irish peat bog.

Discovered in a County Tipperary bog in 2006, the early medieval Faddan More Psalter manuscript provides the starting point for David Fennessy’s seductively scored new cantata. Its mellow instrumental hinterland echoes that of the young JS Bach’s heart-stopping Actus Tragicus which, like his friend Telemann’s Du aber, Daniel, seeks consolation in the sublime interplay of recorders and violas da gamba.

There’s more to John Butt’s blue-chip Dunedin Consort than vivid performances of Baroque masterworks. The current season musters two specially-commissioned world premieres as well as a James Macmillan collaboration with the Hebrides Ensemble. But Bach remains a musical magnetic North. ‘Bach simply doesn’t get any better than this. Urgently, emphatically… recommended' (Fanfare).