Antonio Caldara is best known as a composer of vocal music whose recent reputation was considerably enhanced by René Jacobs’s 1998 Gramophone Award­winning disc of his oratorio‚ Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo (Harmonia Mundi‚ 11/96). The Venetian was a prolific figure who worked in both Mantua and Rome before emigrating to the opulent climes of Charles VI’s Viennese court to become Vice­Kapellmeister to the older Fux. Indeed‚ his Sinfonie a quattro are very much products of their time and place‚ and strikingly reminiscent of Fux’s distinctive late­Baroque stylistic mélange of severe contrapuntal work­outs and prescient simplicity. Both men’s instrumental work on disc is pretty rare but especially Caldara’s Sinfonie which are impressively concise introductions to oratorios‚ extended into four­movement sonatas da chiesa. A single movement barely reaches two minutes. If that sounds like a restless experience compared to the expanded dimensions of the contemporaneous concerto grosso‚ then it is worth advocating the concentrated melodic material‚ no doubt part­derived from the similar tautness found in the Austrian music of previous generations (Bertali‚ Schmelzer and Biber). The more one listens to this well­crafted‚ if not brilliant music‚ the more one hears its cultural resonances in later figures. Mozart’s didactic Fugue in G minor‚ K401‚ must have its source in the austere world of Caldara’s La morte d’Abel. In the other direction‚ there is the staple diet of Corelli‚ a touch of Geminiani and fleeting Vivaldi. The young Salamanca University Baroque Orchestra provide fresh­faced and uninhibited performances‚ employing a string group of around 20 – possibly half as many as Caldara would have had at his disposal in the early decades of the century – and delivering each work with colour and vim. They bring elegance to Il battista and an especially arresting energy to the principal allegros. If not‚ in truth‚ a band of the top rank‚ the Salamancans are quite decent enough to provide an important insight into the work of a pre­Classical Vienna. Recommended to the inquisitive Baroque aficionado.