Bernard Labadie and his Violons du Roy, a Quebec group, bring plenty of energy to this programme of early Handel works. Silete venti is in fact thought to date from the 1720s, but it has all the characteristics of his Roman church pieces and Karina Gauvin sings it spiritedly, with her usual warm and bright tone and with rapid passagework that is a model of precision and clarity, and her trills are exquisite. But the tempos and the character of the movements sometimes seemed slightly off-centre – the opening a shade languid, the third movement (the beautiful ‘Data serta’) oddly perky, the final ‘Alleluja’ alarmingly speedy – jubilant, to be sure, but a bit breathless. Apollo e Dafne, too, has a dashing performance, with generally brisk tempos. Russell Braun, in his slower and more lyrical numbers (such as ‘Come la rosa’), shows that he has a baritone of some warmth and subtlety, but where Apollo is asserting his masculinity, as he does much of the time, he is hurried along and inclined to bawl, and the voice sounds hard and strained. And some of his ‘ornamentation’ is wild. Gauvin, too, excels in the softer music, although she is light and agile in ‘Ardi adori’ and incisive enough in the scene of the attempted rape. In general, however, this performance does not really succeed in capturing the richness and the variety of this delectable work. This is partly because of the orchestral playing, for although (according to the booklet) baroque bows are used in this repertory, their use on modern instruments here produces exaggerated and unstylish articulation. Moreover, in several numbers the continuo accompaniment is at best very remote. Gauvin’s singing offers pleasure, but there are superior versions of both works in the catalogue.'