Suzie LeBlanc’s amiable account of Vivaldi’s Laudate pueri (RV601, composed for Dresden in about 1730) joins the top-class recordings of Vivaldi’s magnificent psalm-setting in recent years, although these performances were taped in the Netherlands in 1998 and have appeared under this catalogue number before. LeBlanc’s singing is less feisty and operatic than Sandrine Piau’s recent version with Accademia Bizantina (Naïve, 8/06) but her more considered sense of gesture and elegant restraint is a perceptive realisation of the sacred text. The most prominent quirk is Stephen Stubbs’s much fleeter impression of sunrise in “Or solis ortu”: elements of LeBlanc’s rapid utterance feel absolutely right but the pacing feels too rushed in quicker passages and one suspects the interpretative decision owed a lot to LeBlanc’s preferred strategy for managing the fiendish top D.

O qui coeli terraeque serenitas (RV631), with a notably beautiful central Largo, is given a ravishing and sultry performance. The least familiar and most intimate of Vivaldi’s three Salve regina.settings is adorned with a violin solo gracefully played by Gottfried von der Goltz. Vos aurae per montes (RV634), composed for the Basilica of San Antonio in Padua, has a somewhat formulaic feel with attractive string writing and challenging vocal writing. However, one cannot begrudge Vivaldi when his formula works with such subtlety and beauty in Teatro Lirico’s hands.