Vivaldi was one of the first composers to take the cello seriously, composing nine sonatas and 27 concertos for it at a time when it was in its infancy as a solo instrument. The seven concertos recorded here survive in manuscripts acquired in Venice between 1708 and 1712 by an agent for the Franconian count Rudolf Franz Erwein von Schönborn, an avid collector and amateur cellist who on his earlier visits to Italy had proved his enthusiasm for modern Italian music by shopping till he dropped. It is not clear whether Vivaldi actually wrote them specifically for Schönborn or if they already existed, but what is certain is that they are Vivaldi’s earliest datable concertos for any instrument, violin included.

So what do they sound like? Well, Vivaldi was in his early 30s when he wrote them, so he was hardly a fidgety youth, but even so this is music of considerable sparkle and energy. The cello scampers around with sprightly agility in the fast movements and hovers dreamily in the more lyrical slow movements – just as you would expect, really, only with extra freshness and life. At least, that is how it all comes across in these buoyant performances by the Treviso-based group Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca and their principal cellist, Walter Vestidello.

Performing one-to-a-part, they achieve a light, sweetly limpid texture, to which the recorded sound adds a pleasant bloom. Vestidello shows himself highly dextrous in the quicker movements, his playing nicely balancing crisp attack with smooth sound, and while other cellists would surely linger longer in the slow movements, he nevertheless remains safely on the right side of perfunctoriness. The dominant mood of the performances is, in any case, one of alert enthusiasm, and even if this were not the largest collection of Vivaldi cello concertos on period instruments currently available on one CD, I would not hesitate to recommend it.