Telemann’s 12 so-called ‘Paris Quartets’ are among the most beguiling chamber works of the late-Baroque period, so a new recording of them is always welcome. Presented here is the complete first set of six, the Quadri for flute, violin, gamba or cello, and continuo, which were composed neither for, nor in, Paris (they were first published in Hamburg in 1730), but whose success in the French capital led Telemann to compose a second set when he visited in 1737.

With typical acumen, Telemann organised the collection into three stylistically differentiated pairs, so, even though the basic scoring remains essentially unchanged throughout, we get two ‘Concertos’, two ‘Sonatas’ and two ‘Suites’. The Quadri are thus more Italian than French in overall flavour, but remain consistent nevertheless in their delightfully fluent musical dialogue and cleverly varied scoring.

As the name suggests, the Freiburg Baroque Consort draws its players from the excellent Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, and with individual players of the calibre of flautist Karl Kaiser and gamba-player Hille Perl on board the signs are promising. And indeed these are performances of considerable technical and musical proficiency, marked by tight ensemble and confident virtuosity; Kaiser’s flute is wonderfully liquid and even, there are attractive lyrical moments from both gamba and cello,and the continuo accompaniment of lute and harpsichord is discreetly effective.

But somehow the end results are disappointingly lacking in sparkle. The playing is of a high quality, for sure, and the music does take off from time to time (usually at the faster movements’ more rhythmically robust moments); but generally speaking the conversational playfulness that can make this music such a joy is missing, as is a sufficiently open and generous recording. A horrible wrong chord has been left in the edit in the last movement of the Second Concerto, by the way, and the production team are not the only accident-prone ones, since the booklet names every player except the harpsichordist. These aberrations apart, this is an efficient and highly professional recording, but seems unlikely to be the last word.