There is not much cast-iron proof about the concert programmes performed at Vauxhall Gardens on any given night during the 1730s, although evidence about such stuff from later on in the 18th century survives. None of the music by Handel included here was written for the pleasure gardens; the only piece he definitely composed for the venue is a little hornpipe written in 1740 (which I expect will be included on a future volume), so the free mixture of orchestral and sung items is a perfectly sensible and enjoyable approach to imagining what a typical night at Vauxhall might have sounded like.

There is a charming ebb and flow to this hypothetical entertainment: the playful Sinfonia from Acis and Galatea leads straight into a little organ improvisation; then the Organ Concerto in B flat (Op 4 No 2), played sweetly on a little chamber organ by Daniel Moult, leads into Galatea’s ‘Hush, ye pretty warbling choir’ – an air certainly sung at Vauxhall on some occasions (a chirruping bird whistle applied at random is a little bit distracting from Kirsty Hopkins’s pretty singing). Burney claims that Arne’s pastoral duet Colin and Phoebe (1745) was encored every night at Vauxhall for three months, and its lilting performance by Eleanor Dennis and Greg Tassell functions here as a counterpart to Handel’s ‘As steals the morn’ (which on this occasion feels a bit perfunctory).

In the midst of this there is a sweet Corellian concerto for strings by John Hebden (a cellist in the Vauxhall band), a couple of little songs attributed to Handel and a solemn performance of the Dead March from Saul; this was a favourite piece of Vauxhall’s proprietor Jonathan Tyers, who installed Roubiliac’s marble statue of the composer (now in the V&A) next to the orchestra stand in May 1738, and two years later subscribed to several sets of the Op 6 Concerti grossi – a massive clue about which concertos were played at Vauxhall that Cunningham might want to pursue in future volumes of the series.