UK-based baroque ensemble Spiritato say one of their main aims is ‘to promote forgotten composers and bring their music to a wider audience’, and if the ‘English’ composers on this release are not all exactly forgotten, only one of the actual pieces has been recorded before. Pepusch is a relatively familiar name and his instrumental music has often been recorded, but his cantatas are much rarer. Here we get four, composed in the first two decades of the 18th century, often for his wife, the operatic soprano Margherita de L’Epine, and sure enough in Kindly fate at length release me and While pale Britannia pensive sate there is some assured bravura writing (some of it with trumpet accompaniment) that smacks of the theatre. At other times, especially in The Spring and Chloe, there is a simpler melodic charm that puts one in mind of Acis and Galatea, surely no coincidence considering that Pepusch and Handel were working for the same boss at the time that work was written. Ciara Hendrick sings them clearly and attractively, dealing capably with the stagey passagework, if elsewhere showing a few niggling moments of discomfort. I do think the engineers could have offered her a touch more focus in the church acoustic, mind, and that the orchestra, directed from the violin by Kinga Ujszászi, should have been more yielding for her.

They are on their own in music by William Corbett, a leading champion of the Italian style whose Le bizzarie universali (published in 1728) are like mini string concertos. His Sonata for trumpet and oboe is on more Purcellian ground. He has been recorded before, but I suspect this is a first outing for Obadiah Shuttleworth. His own works may or not be interesting in themselves but here we get two Corelli violin sonatas pleasingly transformed into concerti grossi in the same year (1726) that Geminiani produced his better-known examples. The playing of Spiritato lacks something of the sonic oomph and tautness of ensemble we might expect of more experienced groups but it is light, bright and competent enough to make this a release lovers of Baroque byways will surely find rewarding.