Oliver Webber deserves a knighthood for services to period violin performance. He is a fount of historical knowledge and an example that those who dabble in ‘authenticity’ should follow far more frequently. And this new title would be rather fitting: Webber works his bow with sword-like precision and his sound gleams like metal in moonlight.

But first, praise must go to Webber’s exquisitely clear booklet notes. These have just the right amount of detail and explanation, and a figure detailing three styles of diminution by Girolamo dalla Casa, Riccardo Rognoni and Giovanni Battista Bovicelli is a lovely addition. Without the notes, I never would have known that the organ on the disc was a 21st-century solution: an electronic sampling of an original Venetian organ housed in the church of S Maria d’Alieto, Izola, Slovenia. Moreover, the notes move us to engage with the diversity of diminution technique on aural display. Take for example the soothing embroidery of Lassus’s ‘Susanne ung jour’ (ornaments by dalla Casa). Here is a modest virtuosity that hangs like cobwebs tucked into ceiling corners. Then there is Webber’s own Ciaccona, based on Monteverdi et al, in which the mathematics spill over bar lines in scalic sprays of semiquavers. Perhaps my favourite, however, is the Sinfonia L’Orlandina by Biagio Marini. It’s an intensely perfumed performance: beguiling then joyful, simple then suave.

Indeed, Webber’s sound is fascinating to ponder. He has luminosity in abundance, and takes off into tender, singing, soulful rhapsody as easily as a bird to flight. But there is a ceiling to his cantabile – or, rather, a ground floor: it never quite ventures deep enough for my taste. The beauty is all up there, aerated and shimmering. His gorgeously shaped messa di voce is the stuff of the sky; occasionally I long for the dangerously subterranean. Yet we do get that elsewhere on the disc, such as in the unexpected blast of organ of Andrea Gabrieli’s Intonazione quarto toni. Steven Devine captures the coldness of pew and shiver of sin in an intelligently paced argument. Indeed, all of Devine’s solo offerings here are marvellous. His harpsichord realisations, seasoned with the subtlest wriggle of dance, are every period violinist’s dream.