Booklet notes by Steven Zohn set the scene for this disc – an imaginary Viennese salon concert from October 1801 – in stunningly evocative terms. Much of Zohn’s impeccable weaving of the historical and the imagined manifests in the tracks themselves. We hear, for example, the blend of ‘sweet-sounding, fretted Viennese violone’ and ‘darker-sounding viola’ in Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf’s Duetto in E flat. It is a strange sonority that takes some getting used to – it’s the first duet for viola and violone of conscious design I’ve come across – but utterly beguiling once one’s ears are established in the treble-less southern hemisphere. The central Adagio is particularly resplendent, and Heather Miller Lardin’s double-stopped accompaniment is a thing of subtle loveliness. A wider rhetorical palette might have been explored in the outer movements: at points it’s not obvious if the duo are trying to be refined or slapstick. Some of the playing dwells too long in a polite middle ground when the robust or burlesque were being beckoned; or, quite simply, could the performances be funnier?

The Allegro moderato of Joseph Martin Kraus’s Quintet in D that opens the album is an unexpected gem. Most extraordinary are the full orchestral textures that this band create: upon the first entry of the flute, we soon reach an exuberant D major chord that gives the first glimpse of what this special scoring can achieve. At its core, a string quartet in its most ordinary guise: a first violinist who fluctuates between virtuosity and song, a second violinist skittishly busy in accompanimental figures, a viola player fuelled on syncopation and a simple harmonic bass line provided by a cellist. But this is transformed into something special: highlighted by Zohn’s vibrant flute-playing, an entire wind section unto itself, and then anchored by sonorous violone, the ensemble more or less achieves the range of a modern-day symphony orchestra. Night Music are most successful in flirting between the two domains that this scoring allows, retreating from orchestral richness into lucid chamber music textures for clever and persuasive effect.

The historical arrangement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony by Johann Peter Salomon is certainly interesting but is patchy in what it manages to retain of Haydn’s colourful scoring. The famous second movement, which gives the Symphony its nickname, is prosaically played out. But there are flickers of genius: Rebecca Harris’s rubato snatched over a whisker-thin bar line, and Zohn’s hybrid bird-clock that is quietly delightful. The final movement is excellently shaped and the returning ritornello maintains admirable sprightliness. The reduced forces here work splendidly: the playing is intimate, buoyant with ‘empty’ space in the texture, and much of it skips by most pleasantly.