What a swagger Gardiner brings to the beginning of BWV37...Best of all are the ebullient choruses that bookend the oratorio, exhibiting Gardiner's innate Bachian flair, and bringing to an end a celebratory journey that's ultimately uplifting.

Gardiner's performances show the ready familiarity with the music you would expect. His thoughtful approach to detail really shows itself in the choruses, perhaps above all in the chorales, each of which finds its own expressive solutions.

There has been an overriding sense throughout the whole 28 volumes of the musicians exploring the music as if for the first time...a kind of fresh-faced, awestruck delight to be experienced round every musical corner. These are performances which feel more as if they have hit the ground running than been painstakingly prepared.

The standard of choral singing and orchestral playing is as high as always and though I have some reservations about the solo team these are largely subjective and not all will share them.

Four very different responses to the same festival...all benefitting from soloists of clear artistic sense, for whom personal limelight is never allowed to supersede the appropriate presentation of the music. Not only a fitting end to Gardiner's marathon project, then, but also a splendid way to mark his seventieth year!

The greatest joy is the singing of the Monteverdi Choir – their chorales are to die for, and the choruses achieve the perfect balance of weight and sprightliness. The solo singing is also excellent...This is a fitting end to a valuable and outstanding project, for which all participants deserve many thanks and the highest praise.

The final volume in John Eliot Gardiner’s mammoth Bach Cantata sequence is one of the very best...The performances are incredibly assured, with tight, rich choral singing and orchestral playing full of felicitous detail. Several wonderful oboe da caccia solos stand out, and all is contained within the not-too-resonant acoustic of St Giles' Cripplegate.