Bach’s joyous Christmas Oratorio has to be the most gratifying music to mark the festive season. With the chamber forces of the Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment suiting the ambience of the newly resplendent St George’s, this performance was balm to the spirit on an otherwise dark night.

The Oratorio is a wonderful example of Bach reusing material he’d used for other cantatas: it’s no ordinary recycling though, but a glorious upcycling known as parody technique. Creating one work for each of six feasts beginning with Christmas and ending with the feast of Epiphany, the sequence with its related key scheme achieves an overall integrity suggesting that Bach also intended it to be a single entity. Just the first, second, third and sixth parts were given here, the final Adoration of the Magi still bringing such a sense of culminating glory that parts four and five were not particularly missed.

Resonant singing from the OAE choir – their contrapuntal choruses defined with precision – belied the fact that there were only 12 voices, of whom soprano Anna Dennis, mezzo Helen Charlston, tenor Gwilym Bowen and bass Laurence Williams in turn stepped forward to sing the solo roles. Bowen was outstanding: his delivery of the Evangelist’s narrative struck the ideal balance of clarity, dramatic flow and tenderness. In the aria Frohe Hirten, where the shepherds are urged to hasten to see the Christ child in the manger, his expressive tenor proved to have great agility, matching that of the fine flute obbligato.

Under the direction of Steven Devine at the chamber organ, OAE’s playing had both the bright uplift with brilliant trumpets and timpani and the characteristic dancing lightness of strings. The muted tone of oboes d’amore also came over well in this auditorium and, together with the oboes da caccia, gave warmth to Part II’s sinfonia, the only music specially written. In troubled times, Bach and his enduring testimony to a shared musical heritage seemed to take on an added significance.