Ideas about neoclassicism have kept pace with perspectives on Classical art. Where Dumbarton Oaks once shared the dry ‘objectivity’ of Bach performances from the dawn of the period-instrument movement, this new account swings and dances like any respectable modern Brandenburg No 3. Chiaroscuro phrasing and rhythmic ebb and flow come naturally to these young musicians, one feels, even if Barbara Hannigan exerts a palpable influence on the rise and fall of the voice-leading within Stravinsky’s counterpoint.

From almost 20 years later, the Septet of 1952 has been curiously overlooked within Stravinsky’s later output. Blame Schoenberg, perhaps, but Stravinsky evidently felt by 1952 that he could no longer afford to ignore the new expressive freedoms afforded by serial technique. Here again, Hannigan and her players breathe with the music, not overworking the texture but keeping it light and airy. I like the knowing poise of the wind Octet, too, with polite enquiries and grand pronouncements cutting across each other in the spirit of an Elizabethan drama.

Alexandra Heath is balanced as a colleague rather than soloist, but her cut-glass Japanese, Russian and infant babble (in the first of the Three Little Songs) draw sharp profiles in the little song-cycles, at once strident, elegant and mysterious as a mirror of Stravinsky himself in 1920s Paris. Anyone who saw the recent Turn of the Screw at English National Opera will recognise the refined timing of Charlotte Corderoy’s conducting in the Concertino. Ragtime makes a riotous send-off, cimbalom twangs to the fore, strings and brass leaning in at drunken angles, making most previous versions (including Simon Rattle with the CBSO) sound rather polite and hoochie-koochie by comparison. Stravinsky could swing with the best of them, just as he could put on a 12-tone mask and an 18th-century wig and still sound effortlessly himself, and this impressive collection has the measure of him.