What a welcome sight it has been for a second disc from Decca’s young Dutch recorder champion Lucie Horsch to cross my desk; because, while her 2016 debut Vivaldi disc might have felt a bit ‘beginner’s guide to the recorder’, it nevertheless showcased some fine playing from an advocate clearly capable of bringing more glossy exposure to this hardly mass-consumption instrument than we’re used to seeing.

Horsch is still only 19, so the first thing to praise here is that she and Decca waited a couple of years before recording this sequel, because that time and space for her to further develop and mature has reaped its rewards in these interpretations: her technique was always immaculate and her tone lively and clear, but there’s been a clear growth in naturalness and confidence. Then, while ‘Baroque Journey’ continues the entry-level theme of the earlier disc – showcasing the recorder’s versatility and vocal qualities by way of the musical landscape of Europe during the instrument’s Baroque heyday – there’s also repertoire for the ‘experts’, along with a stylistic variety that has allowed Horsch herself to shine in numerous directions.

It was a great move, for instance, to bookend the programme with Jacob van Eyck’s solo recorder ‘Lavolette’ and ‘The English Nightingale’, because these mass-appeal miniatures are not only among the first real repertoire that every young recorder player gets to play but also pieces that allow the professional to show what they’ve got in terms of easy venacular, colouristic range and storytelling capabilities; and Horsch delivers on all three.

Collaborator highlights include Thomas Dunford poetically supporting and sparring with Horsch’s own swirling lines in Dario Castello’s Sonata seconda, the joyfully delivered centrepiece of the Sammartini recorder concerto with the Academy of Ancient Music under Bojan Čičić, and Čičić sensitively duetting with Horsch in Bach’s ‘Erbarme dich’ (Horsch on a well-chosen voice flute here).

That latter work is one of a number of Baroque crowd-pleasers punctuating the album, and I suspect Gramophone readers won’t by convinced by all of these; Dido’s Lament with the voice replaced by recorder, for instance. Plus, while Horsch and Charlotte Barbour-Condini’s fluid virtuosities in Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba are delivered with fizzing exuberance, the engineering puts them rather too forward in the balance for my taste.

Still, I’m willing to press skip a couple of times when the rest is so thoroughly enjoyable.