He likens the agitated violins in one of the cantatas to "virtuoso storm petrels"; in the opening chorus of another cantata . . . performed during a harvest festival, he says that the oboes evoke "the waving of corn in the breeze" while the strings mimic the lunge of the sickle.
Gardiner's stylistic finesse is remarkable, and it reveals much about the kind of metaphorical thinking musicians – and especially conductors – habitually do, translating sound into image, the auditory into the linguistic.