Bach is a composer – perhaps more than any other – whose work is amenable to rearrangement, rescoring and reimagining. There are too many examples to mention but, considering the Goldberg Variations alone, I am a huge fan of the reworkings by Robin Holloway and jazzer Uri Caine. The Duo Vershinina/Lee previously expanded Bach’s Inventions for two pianos (with Chiahu Lee credited as arranger in what is clearly a collaboration). They have followed up with this EP of Bach cantata movements, now for piano duet, all but one of the arrangements by Lee. The exception is the starting point: György Kurtág’s now quite well-known take on Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, written for performance with his wife, which is one of the most astonishingly beautiful things I know. The duo’s performance here does not quite match up to the transcendence of others – including György and Marta’s own – but the other tracks take familiar cantata material in new directions, in winning performances.

Lee generally augments the harmony far more than Kurtág does in his relatively straight transcription, and her free incorporation of diatonic dissonance won’t be to everyone’s taste. But I love the hazy new colours she gives to Wachet auf!, and likewise the jazzy interpolations into the Sinfoniafrom Wir danken dir, Gott. Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein appears in a spectacular version on Vikingur Ólafsson brilliant Bach album, and the duo version is less sparkling and fleet, but the movement from Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott is very wittily arranged, the addition of extra contrapuntal lines making it a feat of piano duet choreography. Probably the best track is saved for last though. Alle Menschen müssen sterben is a grave but implacable statement in the face of death, and for me the most successful elaboration on the Bach original, taking it somewhere new, while leaving the original material intact. It’s a lovely end to the sequence – and, at 23 minutes duration, I’d have loved to have had more.