Boccherini’s guitar quintets are not showpieces for the instrument; they are all transcriptions, made late in his career for a guitarist patron, of music written for other combinations and the guitar’s role is almost like a continuo one – though there are a few solo passages and the instrument’s presence in the background does add a hint of exotic Iberian flavouring.

The first guitar quintet here, made up of movements from two string quintets, includes a charming pastoral, sensitively textured by this group, a quick movement with some witty use of harmonics, and, after a typically melancholy little introduction, a lively fandango, harmonically rather repetitive but with various entertaining effects, such as cello glissandi and contributions from the added castanets. The other is mostly based on one of the late piano quintets: the first movement is perhaps overlong for its material, but there is some truly impassioned music in the Andantino and at the end Boccherini adds a movement from a string quintet, the well-known Ritrata di Madrid variations, representing a street band approaching and passing – starting softly, rising to a forceful and richly scored climax, then gracefully fading away. It is done both vigorously and subtly here.

Between the quintets comes a string quartet, from what I would think of as Boccherini’s best and most inventive period (it is his Op 24 No 6, originally published as Op 27 No 2). In its first movement the vivacious and the plaintive run into one another, with all his usual expressive devices – cross-beat phrasing, rich inner textures, persistent detailed figuration – heard to fine effect as realised by Fabio Biondi’s sensitive and resourceful Europa Galante group. A very enjoyable CD.