Nine years ago, after decades of concentrating on Bach cantatas, Emmanuel Music did its first Bach B-minor Mass — after four weeks of having presented sections of it as part of the regular Sunday-morning Emmanuel Church liturgy. The chorus included some legendary singers (Lorraine Hunt, Susan Larson, Jane Bryden) and a group of particularly promising younger singers, including mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal, who’s now a regular Emmanuel soloist. Looking back over my review, I see I was especially captivated by the broad tempos but also the intimate, personal cry from the heart that conductor Craig Smith established for the opening Kyrie, the rockin’-and-rollin’ energy of the Gloria’s “Cum Sancto Spiritu” (which uses the same chord progressions as R&B), the radiant fullness of the Sanctus. These were still among my favorite passages in Emmanuel’s latest performance. But this time, the group who do Bach better than anyone else left me wanting more.

This time, Bach’s great Mass seemed small-scale. Although all the voices carried with great clarity into the distant corners of Emmanuel Church, they seemed a little overwhelmed. The chorus was superb, but some of the solo singing was technically rough. Even Dellal, whose duet with soprano Roberta Anderson in the Credo was one of the high points, had some trouble with pitch in the Agnus Dei, though her sudden drop to a near-whisper was one of the most moving gestures of the entire performance — much of which seemed unusually detached for an Emmanuel event. When soprano Kendra Colton connects (as in the beautiful way she blended with alto Susan Trout in the “Christe eleison”) she’s sublime; but when she’s not right inside the music (as in what should have been a joyful “Laudamus te”), she can seem as if she were singing the phone book. Soprano Jayne West and tenor Frank Kelley, Emmanuel older-timers, had more urgency in the “Domine Deus” — not one-upping each other but rather alternating inspired new additions to the list of God’s attributes.

Bach wrote the B-minor Mass piecemeal, over nearly 25 years (he never heard it complete — or even gave it a title). Finding its unifying structure is tricky. This time Smith let its unwieldy architecture seem fragmented, less than fully shaped. The drama was all local, in some telling transitions, but not over the long haul. Too many of the tempos were on the brisk side (“Does all Baroque music have to sound like Vivaldi?” a listener behind me asked) — unlike the profound stillness Smith achieved with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in his recent evening of Bach cantatas staged by Peter Sellars. The unhurried opening-out of the opening Kyrie returned only in the Sanctus, which Smith paced like the mysterious unfolding of an illuminated scroll. And though the orchestral passage after the Kyrie wasn’t fast either, it went oddly limp, and that lack of rhythmic tension remained through the long repeat of the Kyrie.

The orchestra itself kept running into trouble. The strings were heartbreaking in the stabbing phrases of “Et incarnatus est.” But though concertmaster Danielle Maddon’s obbligato violin in the Benedictus began with intensity and dash, it began to sound forced and out of control (rare for this wonderful musician). Richard Menaul’s horn fanfare in the “Quoniam” began with vocal fervor, but later bobbles undermined the effect. Fortunately, no such distractions affected the profoundly expressive oboe playing of Peggy Pearson and her partner, Barbara LaFitte; or Christopher Krueger’s flute spiraling over the “Qui tollis”; or the blinding trumpets of Bruce Hall, Paul Perfetti, and Gregory Whitaker; or the exceptional continuo of Michael Beattie (organ), Shannon Snapp (cello), and Gregory Koeller (bass).

Last February, even with the great German baritone Thomas Quasthoff, Seiji Ozawa’s listless B-minor Mass with the BSO showed how vacuous Bach can get in the wrong hands. With Craig Smith and Emmanuel Music, even at less than their best, the spiritual center is never lacking. Their problem is that they have their own standards to live up to.

The most gripping B-minor Mass I’ve ever heard came from an unlikely source — Benjamin Zander, hardly a Baroque specialist. In 1977, he led the Cecilia Society with a roster of compelling soloists: luminous Diana Hoagland, heartbreaking Jane Struss, the late, elegant Ray DeVoll, and still-admirable David Evitts — all of them storytellers.

Zander’s latest program with the Boston Philharmonic was far from Bach — three musical narratives by Russians who had big influences on one another: Mussorgsky (Night on Bald Mountain), his friend Rimsky-Korsakov (Sheherazade), and their disciple, Stravinsky (Firebird Suite). This wasn’t, as Zander said in his pre-concert talk, “intellectual music,” like the Beethoven and Mahler he’s famous for. But narration is not without ideas — as in the mysterious calm and colorful outbursts of Stravinsky’s gorgeously conceived folktale ballet. Instead of the familiar Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement of Bald Mountain we know and love from Fantasia, we got Mussorgsky’s original version — starker, more jagged, more obsessive, less tuneful, sounding as if it had been composed 50 years later.

The morning of the first of the weekend’s two performances, concertmistress Joanna Kurkowicz was suddenly hospitalized. Who at the last moment could play the formidable violin solos representing the voice of Sheherazade? Not to worry: BPO violinist Wei-Pin Kuo had learned the part for a competition years ago, and she saved the day by playing it most seductively. Cheers also for harpist Martha Moor’s haunting spectrum of dynamics in the strummed chords surrounding Kuo’s violin — Sheherazade’s own accompanist as she tells the sultan four of her 1001 fabulous tales.

One of the qualities that sets Zander apart from most of his contemporaries, whether in Mahler, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, or even Bach, is his narrative zest. There’s always a story he must tell, and his accomplished — and game — players have become his co-conspiratorial equals.