Having boldly opened their recording account last year with a disc of violin sonatas by Pisendel, Albinoni and Vivaldi, La Serenissima expand to small-orchestra proportions for their second release, this time devoted more specifically to Vivaldi. The Arcadian slant suggested in the disc’s title does not, in truth, extend much beyond the inclusion of the Pastorella Concerto and a clutch of arias from the opera Dorilla in Tempe, but that is of no real consequence. Not all of the concertos for various groupings of string soloists show Vivaldi at his most inspired, but the concertos for two violins and two cellos (RV564 and RV 575) are fully worthy of him, and the charming La Pastorella is given a stringy twist on this occasion through the use of three violins instead of the usual violin, recorder and oboe.

All are played with great style and verve by the accomplished young players of La Serenissima, whose evident belief in the music is transmitted in the enthusiastic freshness with which they set about their business. Director and principal violin soloist Adrian Chandler is a fine player with a no-nonsense approach that does not exclude the tastefully expressive, as for instance in the slow movement of La Pastorella. The accompaniment here is a single theorbo, but elsewhere the continuo department ensure that the music never lacks punchy energy or drive.

Perhaps the most ear-catching music-making of the disc comes in the three arias from Dorilla in Tempe, one by Vivaldi from the original 1726 production, and two by other composers (Hasse and Giacomelli) that he inserted into a later revival. All three give clear evidence of the increasing taste in Venice for the vocal pyrotechnics of the new Neapolitan style, and Mhairi Lawson’s singing surely brings a taste of the kind of visceral thrill the star singers of the day were able to offer their audiences. Her stunning, wholehearted performance of the Giacomelli aria may occasionally put the microphones under pressure, but it is almost worth the purchase money on its own.