These works have sometimes been handled as trifles or decorative miniatures, but Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani treats them as profoundly expressive and introspective works. Here measured, there free, his readings highlight the ebb and flow of their poetry and prose; phrases are rhetorically articulated.

Esfahani’s playing is colourful and magnetic, the fingerwork in the more virtuoso works absolutely clean and articulate. The mean-tone tuning gives the accidentals and chromatic outliers in the more harmonically meandering of the pieces a wonderfully piquant twang.

Listening to this Iranian-American wheeling at speed through 16th and 17th-century English delights is as exhilarating a musical experience as I know. He makes his double manual harpsichord — a modern version of a 1710 original — sound as resourceful as an orchestra. It’s richly textured, bubbling with colours, able to whisper and shout as well as most stages in between. As for virtuoso flair, even Liszt would doff the cap at Esfahani’s furious arpeggios and decorative flourishes, fingers flying at the speed of light.

Ultimately it is the vitality and integrity of Esfahani’s performances, which are very well recorded, that stand out in bringing this ancient music to life.