We’re grabbed by an arresting and self-assured anacrusis, a captivating fullness of tone. But it’s not just a case of beauty, though Alfredo Bernardini’s sound obviously has this in spades. It’s more the wealth of colour he draws out of his oboes, plural – he uses five on this album, each with its own timbral characteristics and internal tensions. The JC Bach is performed on an instrument with pungent clarity, though it plunges into sweetness too. The oboe for the Mozart is perhaps the most colourful, reaching an ugly, chalumeau-like piercingness in the Adagio. My favourite, though, is the oboe used for the quartet by Friedrich Dotzauer, a composer and cellist in the Dresden court orchestra. Take the Rondo: the fairground tempo showcases the instrument’s wiggling fallibility, and a feature is made of its fabulous lack of keys. Bernardini’s breath spills into melodic splurge, a peach injected with amaretto, oozing in malleability.

Alfredo is joined by a younger generation of period-performance royalty, including his violinist daughter Cecilia Bernardini, her partner Marcus van den Munckhof on cello, and the viola player Simone Jandl. This almost family affair makes for a palpable intimacy between the players. When Quartetto Bernardini exchange canonic glissandos in the Andantino of the Dotzauer, for example, it’s as if they are trading remarks round the dining-room table. The disc teems in these moments of the gloriously quotidian. When Jandl emerges in melody, particularly in the JC Bach, she’s a porpoise coming up for air: there’s an understated, colloquial virtuosity to her playing that simply glistens. Cecilia is evergreen in brightness, and her flamboyant performance in the Allegro finale of the quartet by Alessandro Rolla is particularly impressive.

The reciprocity and dynamism of the playing is, however, relentless. With so much characterisation, so much dialogue, ‘Around Mozart’ doesn’t exactly make for relaxing listening. The listener is entangled in a jungle of musical activity, albeit splendid undergrowth. Could there be more moments of repose? There is the teeniest sense that these instrumentalists are too clever, too attentive to the rhetorical needs of others. A ridiculous criticism, perhaps, because this album is most certainly a treat. For lovers of historical oboes, it is an absolute must-have.