That respect for the spirit of classical form and tonality can, I think, sometimes dampen the effectiveness of the late Brahms. The String Quintets, however, are supremely powerful statements of classicism’s continuing expressive possibilities. This is, perhaps, because the Quintet as a musical form in the hands of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert always lent itself to a certain looseness of construction.

The now US-based Tackas Quartet’s performance  is extraordinary , the latest in a set of equally compelling Hyperion discs surveying the Romantic and 20th century chamber music repertoire. The sound is engineered with Hyperion’s typical brilliance and makes the most of the band’s uncanny ability to combine the rubatos characteristic of the great Middle European tradition of string playing with the precision and crispness of tone demanded by current tastes.  Hopefully, the focus on Beethoven, Webern, and Shostakovich in the Tackas Quartet’s 2014 Wigmore Hall concerts is a clue as to what we can expect from them on disc in the not too distant future.

By contrast, the Easter Oratorio is perhaps the most dramatic of Bach’s sacred works. Lacking a narrator, this reworking of an earlier but now lost secular cantata portrays, in sung dialogue, the interaction among Peter, John, Magdelene, the Virgin, and others on Easter morning after finding the empty tomb. Performed for the first time in Leipzig, the dramatic form is as much attributable to the early 18thcentury Lutheran custom of performing Easter plays as it is to the shape of the secular materials from which it was constructed.

The performances are both exquisite, partaking of the intensity and artistry which has characterized Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir’s recording of the last couple of years. During the late 90s, it often seemed that Gardiner and his instrumental and vocal associates had lost some of the spark that characterized their earlier work and, unfortunately, many of the Pilgrimage recordings sound a bit weary and drawn even though sung and played with technical perfection. Perhaps it is the freedom and purpose that came with the creation of Solo Dei Gloria or perhaps it is just that revival of power and inspiration characteristic of the late careers of many great artists but Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir have, over the last five years, gifted listeners with a sequence of incredible performances. The Actus Tragicus and Easter Oratorio are of that same high calibre and should take one through the Easter weekend nicely, with the Actus Tragicus forming a perfect backdrop for Holy Saturday reflections and the Oratorio serving as the soundtrack for Easter celebrations.