Bejun Mehta’s debut solo disc is more adventurous than hackneyed Handel recital programmes often are. Some of the selections were written originally for Senesino, although four of the nine featured arias were not – perhaps Harmonia Mundi’s back-cover blurb name-checking the famous castrato was over-interpreted from Reinhard Strohm’s excellent booklet-note. The running order hangs together well, and several unpredictable choices come off brilliantly: Amadigi’s “Sento la gioia” (featuring bold trumpet playing by Friedemann Immer) is a fine opener, Riccardo Primo’s “Agitata da fiere tempeste” is delivered impressively, and the bassoon line in Bertarido’s lament “Con rauco mormorio” is played compassionately (and this particular choice from Rodelinda makes a nice change from the usual “Dove sei, amato bene”). The disc concludes sweetly with the duet “Per le porte del tormento”, which, although a bit laboured in places, allows Mehta and Rosemary Joshua plenty of space for loveliness.

Mehta’s singing can be astonishingly good, but from time to time lines are devoid of sympathetic appogiaturas, and occasionally embellishments are unstylish – such as a nasty chromatic ornament in an otherwise enthralling performance of Tolomeo’s suicide scene “Stille amare”. He applies more vibrato in slow arias than I would prefer but his precise coloratura in direct faster arias is superb (an energised Orlando’s “Fammi combattere”). The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra plays excellently, particularly during a passacaglia from Rodrigo. Curiously, the most familiar music emerges least convincingly, such as Radamisto’s “Ombra cara”: it sounds beautifully pathetic but utterly lacks the malevolent aspect of the hero’s vow to carry out a vendetta to avenge his supposedly dead wife (Max Emanuel Cencic’s recent recital – Virgin, 8/10 – contained a much more persuasive characterisation). The mad scene from Orlando is grossly over-egged by conductor René Jacobs in some passages and wilfully under-egged in others. The Belgian maverick cannot resist intervening with artificial orchestral effects to reinforce that Orlando has lost his mind (although some of the unexpected softer phrases work a treat). Like no other conductor of Baroque vocal music, he juxtaposes insightful excitement and annoying interference, sometimes even in the same passage of music (eg the stilted mannerisms of an exaggerated “Voi, che udite” from Agrippina). Unstylish organ continuo abounds; but generally, this curate’s egg is one of Jacobs’s better-directed Handel recordings.