Things didn’t look too promising when Bach Akademie Australia Artistic Director and lead violin Madeleine Easton welcomed the packed audience at St James’s Church, Sydney, with her left arm in a sling.

She had sprained it in a fall just two weeks before the start of the ensemble’s latest tour marking a homecoming for one of Australia’s finest Baroque sopranos, Miriam Allan. SA violinist and Akademie regular Simone Slattery stepped into take over Concertmaster duties for the program which featured JS Bach’s secular cantatas, culminating in his light-hearted Coffee Cantata, the closest he ever got to dabbling in the world of opera.

Allan, who sang at Prince Philip’s funeral in 2021 and has performed with all the top international ensembles including Les Arts Florissants, Collegium Vocale Gent and the Monteverdi Choir, starts the concert with the radiant Wedding Cantata Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, sharing the limelight with oboist Adam Masters for the opening aria and with Slattery’s deftly weaving violin for ‘When the spring breezes blow’.

Weddings & Parties over Coffee. Photo © Keith Saunders

Blessed with a sweet and pure tone across her...