Accademia Ottoboni is named after the cardinal who patronised important musicians in the group’s native Rome (although the cardinal himself was actually Venetian). The academy’s leading members all play regularly for better-known Italian Baroque ensembles, and this programme appears to be the brainchild of flautists Manuel Granatiero and Laura Colucci: they each perform a concerto at the bookends of this disc (Colucci in RV440; Granatiero in RV439 – one of two Op 10 concertos known as La notte), and combine together in a concerto for two flutes (RV533). Mauro Ceccato takes the limelight in a cello concerto (RV406). At full strength in the concertos, the band consists of just 10 players, with mostly single strings per part; they perform collectively with spirited vigour in quick music and gentleness in slow movements. The central Andante of RV406 features lovely cantabile playing by Ceccato, and the two flautists combine to enchanting effect in the bubbly opening movement of RV533. Granatiero’s tuning of long-held notes in the slow opening of RV439 is not quite so endurable but the quick movements are judged expertly.

Most Vivaldi CD anthologies confine themselves to only one genre, which would have been alien to an 18th-century concert audience and sometimes feels unrealistic today. Although listening to 70 minutes of concertos or arias offers its own kinds of reward, this collection has an attractively varied mixture of concertos and secular cantatas, and this works greatly to the advantage of both the composer’s reputation and his latter-day listeners’ attention span. It does no harm that the three soprano cantatas included here are all good pieces, sung compellingly by Raffaelle Milanesi. Her dark timbre and precise divisions are seductive in the heart-melting first aria of Vengo a voi luci adorate. All’ombra di sospetto features a solo flute part that was perhaps intended for a player at Dresden and is performed here judiciously by Granatiero. The final aria of Che giova il sospirar, povero core (“Cupido, tu vedi”) provides the title of the disc. Vivaldians need not hesitate.