Sometimes, especially in Baroque music where even the most engaging music can tend towards the wallpaper if played with even the merest hint of glibness, it takes a particular type of performance to tip a piece’s appearance over the edge from pretty into complexly beautiful. And, again especially in Baroque music where the potential for the contrast between the two is so great, reaching that tipping point can create effects like an almost psychedelic world opening up before you; the ordered lines of the track listings on this disc belie the relentless creativity and imagination behind the tiny vignettes that make up its many movements.

The best historically informed performances and recordings recreate the spirit as well as the sound of the music and, in ‘Telemann:Time: Travel’, the now well-established group Passacaglia do just that, combining the two to make a performance of irrepressible joy. They absorb the virtuosity in the complex lines of this music so totally that it in no way interferes with the subtlety of their phrasing: the performance, led (not dominated) by Annabel Knight’s phosphorescent top line, teases out Telemann’s rhythmic and melodic jokes, idiosyncracies and brainteasers with such effortless energy that it is hard to believe that many of the recordings of these contrasting collections of works, presenting them as little more than academic and entrepreneurial musings, ever existed.