The precocious gifts of Arriaga are of an order to be set alongside those of a Mozart or a Mendelssohn. Listening to the symphony he wrote at 18 or 19, with its unique blend of Latin lyricism and classical purposefulness, it’s easy to imagine what he might have bought to the symphony had the gods not loved him too well.

The performance by this Portuguese group admirably catches its passion, in the fiery first movement and the agitated, nervy finale, and also in the Schubertian warmth of the Andante. And the opera overture, an earlier work – he probably wrote it at 14 but may have revised it a little later – while obviously influenced by Rossini, has a tone of its own and many individual ingenious, felicitous touches. Its wit and spirit are happily captured here.

Nearly half this CD is occupied by Port-uguese music, all of it interesting, much of it attractive. The Seixas movements sound too like his harpsichord sonatas, with their way of nagging away at little motifs, just like Scarlatti, and their short-breathed invention. The overture by João de Sousa Carvalho, a leading figure in Portuguese musical life in the later 18th century, is a pleasant and inventive three-movement piece in the frothy Italian manner of around 1770.

António Leal Moreira’s single-movement sinfonia of 1803 begins with a rather imposing, self-important introduction, but with the Allegro jollity takes over, with a warbling clarinet tune, although there’s a quite pompous trumpety ending. There’s a similar pattern to the opera overture from 1805 by Marcos António da Fonseca Portugal, which already hints at what Rossini would soon be doing. These are attractive pieces, well worth a hearing for anyone curious about what was going on at the periphery of Europe in the high days of the Viennese classical era. Álvaro Cassuto directs alert performances from the Algarve orchestra that do the music ample justice.