Seventeenth-century English composers knew a thing or two about epidemics, restrictions, conflicts and the surge of cultural release that comes afterwards. There’s a sense of seize-the-day elation and urgency about this recital from Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas and Ensemble Les Surprises that would be irresistible, even if it wasn’t quite so apt.

Usually to be found exploring the less familiar names of the French Baroque, the period group have crossed the Channel for this exhilarating, no-holds-barred romp through vocal and instrumental music by Purcell, Blow, Eccles and Jeremiah Clarke. The theme is love, but there’s nothing coy or sugary about either music or performances that embrace extremes of emotion and expression.

You get a good sense of the ensemble’s vibrant sound in the opening Hornpipe from King Arthur. Oboes and bassoon buzz fruitily, their dance propelled along by glinting tambourine and guitar. But just when you think this might be a one-trick pony of a recording – all broad gestures and big rhythms – the Saraband for the Graces from Blow’s Venus and Adonis arrests you with its restraint and elegance: a dance so subtle it’s more of a thought than a movement, rocking almost imperceptibly beneath an edgily spare violin melody.

Much of this is theatre music, and in the absence of a stage Les Surprises supply all the drama. They’re joined by soprano Eugénie Lefebvre and baritone Étienne Bazola – both idiomatic English speakers who can turn their hand to comedy (Bazola’s ‘There’s nothing so fatal as woman’ walks a clever line between pantomime and mad scene, while Lefebvre’s ‘There’s not a swain in the plain’ is wonderfully arch without ever losing beauty of tone) as neatly as tragedy.

The bravura mad scene ‘I burn’ from Eccles’s The Comical History of Don Quixote takes no prisoners in Lefebvre’s swooping, diving delivery, now distorting and chewing the text, now disarmingly simple, while Bazola’s ‘Poor Celadon’ matches the accompanying chamber organ for crooned softness and reedy melancholy. But the frank sensuality of their duet ‘My dearest, my fairest’ is, if anything, outdone by the suggestive interweaving of the oboes in the Symphony from The Indian Queen, Lucile Tessier’s matronly bassoon lingering close like an anxious chaperone.

There’s delight after delight here, both in repertoire – which includes plenty of lesser-known treasures – and performances. This is one French invasion to welcome with open arms.