Vivaldi’s Op 3 concertos – four each for one, two and four violins – may not be his most famous, but they were certainly his most influential. It was with their enormously successful publication in Amsterdam in 1711 that the Venetian-style concerto was transmitted to northern Europe, there to become the basic formal model for virtually all concerto-writing over the next 100 years or so. Not that that in itself makes them worth listening to, of course, but it is probably fair to say that it was not just their formal clarity that appealed to composers such as Bach, Telemann and Leclair. Rather, it seems no less likely that the imagination of Europe’s music lovers was caught by the fact that these concertos – whose collective title translates roughly as ‘harmonic fire’, or perhaps ‘harmonic inspiration’ – saw the first appearance on the international stage of that irresistible force, the ‘Vivaldi sound’. Here is that unmistakable mixture of tender lyricism and buoyant energy, wrapped up in three- and four-movement packages of delicious neatness and economy, while the variety shown by the set as a whole also rubbishes the wearisome old accusation often levelled at Vivaldi, that of being formulaic.

It is surprising, therefore, that more recordings of the set have not been made, and even more so that modern-instrument recordings still outnumber those on period instruments, of which this is only the fourth. The first was Christopher Hogwood’s with the Academy of Ancient Music in 1980, and the new one has more in common with that than just its director, since both adopt the one-to-a-part policy implied by the original printed part-books. The result is a bright and clearly defined texture in which nobody can hide, and L’Arte dell’Arco show that they can scamper around the livelier passages of Vivaldi’s music with admirable speed and precision, not least Federico Guglielmo, the group’s founder and principal soloist. These are sympathetic performances, generally alert to the music’s rhetorical language but without feeling the need to hammer it home or add too many new messages of their own. There is much to be said for this kind of genial lightness, yet what one would imagine to be the principal gain of the chamber approach seems to be missing on this occasion. The AAM’s pioneer violinists may have had to battle with their instruments more, and maybe they lack something in indefinable ‘Italian-ness’, but Monica Huggett, Catherine Mackintosh, John Holloway and Elizabeth Wilcock are a bright bunch, and somehow their performances, while essentially similar in style, have a greater sense of delight and discovery about them. It is, however, the sound of the new recording which lets its intentions down more than anything else; edgy and claustrophobic compared to the more refined airiness of the AAM, it is a major obstacle to enjoyment and, indeed, to further comparison.

For those who (like me) favour these concertos one-to-a-part, the AAM must stay as a first choice. Lovers of a plusher period-orchestral sound could not hope for better than the English Concert’s suave mid-’80s recording on Archiv, while for adventurers Europa Galante’s boldly creative Virgin Veritas recording (9/98, sadly currently unavailable) will be gratifyingly strong stuff.