It may not look like it at first but there are three completely different orchestras on this disc. The European Union Baroque Orchestra is a course-based outfit of young professionals whose personnel changes every year, and here we have performances cut together from concerts and patch sessions by the 2008, 2010 and 2011 teams. It doesn’t sound like it, however, for there is a near-total consistency of sound and approach, making a more than usually fitting and generous celebration of this estimable organisation’s continuing high achievement. These are live-wire performances, technically excellent and propelled with exactly the right degree of driving energy by Lars Ulrik Mortensen, a director of great imagination and musicality with a special ability to find details in the music you maybe hadn’t registered before, draw them out and thrill you with them.

But I must leave room to laud Maria Keohane, a soprano whose Handelian qualities are superbly showcased. The turbulent but lyrical Ero e Leandro could have been made for her. Bright but strong in tone, virtuoso but pressingly expressive, she also has just enough of that indefinable personal distinctiveness that can touch the heart by revealing there is a person there, not just a voice. Not that you could ever doubt that in the ‘encore’ of the final aria from Il trionfo del Tempo del Disinganno, a heart-stoppingly pure and beautiful disavowal of life’s frivolous distractions in which her rapt singing is intimate with Huw Daniel’s sympathetic solo violin. This track is worth your money on its own. Handel was young when he wrote most of this music, his growing art confident, sincere and direct. What a fine fit for these performers.