‘The Lost Birds’ is how this title translates into English; couple that with its subtitle, ‘The South American Project’, and you would be forgiven for thinking that this was another expedition into rediscovered Baroque repertoire. In fact, most of the tracks here are folksongs or 20th-century Latin standards. The reasoning is both simple and ingenious: that the plucked instruments played today in South America are more closely related to those of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Spanish and Portuguese first introduced them to the continent, than to their modern-day European descendants, and therefore represent a kind of ‘living Baroque’. In an imaginative reversal, Christina Pluhar has applied her ‘big-band’ continuo line-up of harps, psalteries, theorbos and guitars to songs by the likes of Astor Piazzolla, Aríel Ramírez and Consuelo Velázquez, adding in the odd charango or arpa llanera and occasional cornett riff. There is also a colourful and swinging arrangement of Soler’s harpsichord Fandango.

So much for the explanation. Pluhar’s booklet-note is pretty thorough; but really the important thing is to enjoy the music for its immediacy and honesty. And in this it is deeply pleasing. The songs are a typically Latin American mix of haunting melody and rich imagery but the whole project gains strength and variety from its quality of performances. Pluhar’s instrumentalists are top-class and each of the five singers has something special to offer, from Philippe Jaroussky’s sweetly plaintive countertenor to the extraordinarily touching and feminine tones of Vincenzo Capezzuto, and from Luciana Mancini’s dark, youthful passion to the hard-won emotional authority of folk singer Lucilla Galeazzi. ‘Early music’ this isn’t – but it is beautiful music-making.