This is a promising sign, not only from the Italian countertenor Raffaele Pé but also the recently founded band Spiritato!, which consists of the new generation of London-based specialist Baroque instrumentalists. Although I wish stuff this good was being issued on good old-fashioned physical formats by Resonus Classics, the digital-only label’s website offers a free download of a booklet containing artwork, essay and sung texts.

Vivaldi’s Cessate, omai cessate has become staple countertenor fodder since Andreas Scholl shot to fame with his famous recording but there is no hint of complacent emulation or routine in the freshly balanced pizzicato strings and subtly dramatic singing in ‘Ah, ch’infelice sempre’. Pé copes pretty well with taxing long reams of soft coloratura that stretch his technique to its limit in the florid opening and closing parts of Porpora’s antiphon Salve regina. Alessandro Scarlatti’s Bella dama di nome Santa starts with a delectable ‘Introduttione’ that features bright recorder-playing by László Rózsa; the disarming cantata describes the jealous ranting of a jilted lover whose ex-girlfriend Santa does not deserve her sainted name. It is an enigmatic question whether Scarlatti’s peculiar motet Infirmata, vulnerata is secular love poetry or a sacred devotion; but if anyone still doubts that the elder Scarlatti is a great composer in his own right, just listen to Pé and Spiritato! performing ‘Vulnera percute, transfige cor’.