It’s hard to imagine a more passionate advocate for these works than Sergio Azzolini, who brings fiendish agility to the fast movements and makes his instrument sigh and sing in the pathos-laden, operatic slow movements. He draws pert ensemble playing, too, from L’Onda Armonica who capture both the visceral and the delicate sides of Vivaldi’s musical personae.

I’m not sure that bassoon concertos will ever hold quite the same mass appeal as violin ones but Vivaldi’s do a great sales job for the instrument, and Azzolini has done a great sales job on Vivaldi.

Azzolini displays serious agility in the gleefully flamboyant Allegros of RV489 and 497, and conjures an astonishing range of sonorities from his instrument throughout – there are moments in the second concerto where he emulates a pizzicato cello to great effect, and elsewhere there’s a natural horn-like quality to his sound in the lower-middle register. Imaginative use of continuo, too: in 467 you’d swear a thundersheet had been added into the mix!

Azzolini plays seven concertos, relishing the perky humour of the fast movements while lavishing a singing legato on central andantes and largos. The variety of invention astonishes, no more so than in his transcriptions’ violin cadenzas.