‘That man has a noble style, the like of which I have found in no one else,’ remarked Gluck of Joseph Martin Kraus (1756 92), Mannheim-trained but active for most of his career in Stockholm. Gluck is indeed a dominant influence in these assorted overtures and arias, though Kraus’s colourful orchestration, vividly delineated by the Helsinki period band, owes more to his Mannheim experiences.

Kraus was terminally ill when he composed his last and perhaps most imposing work, the Begrafnings-kantat (‘Burial Cantata’) for Gustav III, shot at a masked ball. The Overture’s mingled hieratic solemnity and poignant lyricism make it all the more frustrating that the complete cantata is still unavailable on disc. The allegros of the Proserpin and Äfventyraren overtures compensate in swashbuckling energy for what they lack in memorable themes, while the fine Birthday Overture for Gustav contrasts a limpid – and decidedly Gluckian – minuet tune with thunderous eruptions for full orchestra. The playing throughout bristles with energy, with natural horns and contrabassoon lending an aptly raucous buzz to the tutti textures.

Interleaved with the overtures, the polyglot vocal numbers are all comparatively brief and technically undemanding. They range from the ingenuous ariette ‘Du temps, qui détruit tout’ (shades, again, of Gluck), via the pastoral Christmas song ‘Parvum quando cerno Deum’, coloured by the throaty timbre of cors anglais, to a touching scena from Metastasio’s cantata La tempesta. Monica Groop, with her tangy, vibrant mezzo, always sounds expressively involved, though her phrasing can be gusty and her dynamic level tends to hover around mezzo-forte – an impression enhanced by the voice’s close miking in a rather boomy acoustic. The Begrafnings-kantat Overture apart, I wouldn’t rank the works here among Kraus’s most distinctive. But there is plenty to enjoy in music that is never less than agreeable and carefully composed, from a composer well above the common run of 18th-century Kleinmeister.