Regular readers of these pages may spot that this is Giovanni Sollima’s second recording devoted to Giovanni Battista Costanzi, the Rome-based cello virtuoso who served in the household of Vivaldi’s famous patron Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. The first recording (7/16) presented Costanzi’s cello sonatas; and while I reviewed that one with enthusiasm, it’s just possible that I like this sequel even more.

What’s particularly surprising is how different the two discs are, despite the fact that Sollima is again joined by fellow cellist Monika Leskovar and the Arianna Art Ensemble. Because while there’s not much between Costanzi’s sonatas and sinfonias in terms of form, their stylistic differences are surprisingly profound, the sinfonias having a far more galant quality to them, along with a more international, less Corelli-like feel. As a result, while we still get plenty of the muscular panache and slightly rough-edged abandon that Sollima and his 1769 Ruggieri cello brought so enjoyably to the sonatas, we’re also treated to an abundance of warmly resonant, strong-toned singing lines, their delectability heightened by the barely-tamed-lion quality Sollima brings to them; listen, for example, to the opening of the D major Sinfonia’s Adagio staccato.

Additional programming spice comes by way of an entirely different-flavoured sonata da camera of Costanzi’s for two cellos without basso continuo, in which the two instruments imitate the sounds and melodic gestures of horns. This is much lighter and more intimate than brass imitations might suggest, Sollima and Leskovar playing as one, with some wonderfully atmospheric rumblings from timpanist Gianluca Ubaldi.

Factor in the same recording aesthetic as for the sonatas – immediate while not overbearing – and this is a fantastic and genuinely contrasting successor.