No, this is not the first ‘classical record’! As discs by Gregorio Paniagua, Petros Tabouris and Anne Bélis show, others have tried their hands at reconstructing the music of ancient Greece but, incredibly enough, there is sufficient repertoire for these recordings to be essential for anyone with an interest in this field. Any such project obviously depends on a great deal of historical research (notably in terms of instruments – in this case all reconstructed by Paul J Reichlin – and language) and, just as importantly, informed creative imagination, without which the results will be merely sterile.

While Paniagua’s 1979 disc ‘Musique de la Grèce Antique’ (Harmonia Mundi) errs, perhaps, on the side of over-inventiveness, this is easily preferable to dull pseudo-accuracy. In this case the results are impressive. There’s a confidence about the instrumental playing (though perhaps ever so slightly less about the singing) which overcomes initial reservations, and a good deal of the music is very memorable: the drinking song ‘Gaia’, sung in suitably rustic fashion and accompanied by splendidly raucous auloi, is probably my favourite here. Not only a worthy addition, then, to this little-known area of musicological research but one to which one can listen with pleasure and fascination.