Francesco Maria Veracini continues to make regular entrances into the recording catalogue without ever seeming to threaten the dominance of Vivaldi in the world of the Italian Baroque concerto. A Florentine thought by some to have been Europe’s finest violinist, he spent time in Venice, London and Dresden, so was clearly at the heart of things, with his travels enabling him to form, in Charles Burney’s words, “a style of playing peculiar to himself”. Burney also called him a capo pazzo (madman), mind, but it is the eclectic element which shows more strongly in the works offered on this disc of diverse instrumental compositions. Here are two overtures, one a four-movement concerto-like piece and the other a somewhat Handelian six-movement suite, the only real similarity between them lying in the “unison” minuets with which they both finish – a quirky but inelegant Veracini-esque characteristic which I suspect many will find hard to love. Then there is a violin concerto in Vivaldian style, and two violin sonatas which seem to combine the Corellian and Vivaldian manners.

But if for this reason Veracini’s music may remain hard for the modern public to fix in their minds as they have that of Vivaldi or Corelli, it has a life of its own which still makes it worth the hearing. It gets persuasive treatment here by an Italian ensemble I have found rather raw in the past but who now play with stronger focus and a darkly resonant but well balanced sound. Leading from the front, violinist-director Federico Guglielmo finds brightness and energy in these pieces, and skips through the virtuoso challenges laid out for him without apparent strain. One for Baroque fans principally, I suppose, but well done certainly.