This is a fine disc, so let’s get the negative, non-musical criticisms out of the way. From time to time I remark on the inadequacies of the material published with CDs, including faulty translations, omissions, misprints and errors. Well, here we go again. I can’t complain about the translations of the arias, because there aren’t any. But a gremlin has crept into the texts – only available online – replacing all but two apostrophes with the little bracket (>) sometimes used in place of quotation marks. More seriously, two lines of recitative printed before the aria from Acis and Galatea are not actually sung, while the reverse is true of ‘M’adora l’idol mio’, where the recitative is sung but the words are not printed. Moreover, the introductory article in the booklet provides details of an aria from Acis not included on the disc, Damon’s ‘Shepherd, what art thou pursuing?’, instead of Galatea’s ‘As when the dove’.

Or, rather, ‘Wie’s Täubchen klagt’ as, of the nine pieces by Handel, four are in the arrangements made by Mozart towards the end of his life for Baron van Swieten. The Overtures to Acis and Alexander’s Feast bounce along nicely, the oboe passages in the former played by the clarinets. But ‘Wie’s Täubchen klagt’ needs to be lighter; it doesn’t help that the clarinet doubling the vocal line (again, in place of an oboe) makes the texture too thick.

Mozart’s ‘additional accompaniments’ to Der Messias will be familiar to those who know the once-standard Novello edition by Ebenezer Prout. Some of them are enjoyably OTT: his version of ‘How beautiful are the feet’ is discretion itself, a flute replacing the violins when they accompany the voice, a bassoon adding delicate harmonies, and the two adding a bit of spice to the postlude.

Mari Eriksmoen is a Norwegian soprano who has sung Mozart’s Susanna, Zerlina and Fiordiligi for Nikolaus Harnoncourt and recorded Blonde in Die Entführung for René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 10/15); she can also be seen as Blonde in a DVD from Glyndebourne conducted by Robin Ticciati (Opus Arte, 8/16). She was a star of that production, and she is a star here. Pamina’s ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ doesn’t quite touch the heart until the very end, but the other items are exemplary. The runs in the martial aria from Mitridate that opens the album are perfectly placed, as they are in Donna Anna’s ‘Non mi dir’ from Don Giovanni. Eriksmoen captures the restlessness of Ilia’s first aria in Idomeneo, enhanced by stabbing sforzandos in the orchestra; and she sounds suitably vengeful in Alma grande e nobil core, an aria that Mozart wrote for Louise Villeneuve, later to be his Dorabella in Così fan tutte.

Four arias by Handel plain, sans Mozart, find Eriksmoen at her most agile. In ‘M’adora l’idol mio’ she reels off the semiquavers in combination with an excellent, unnamed oboist, while the aria from Silla kicks off with a pleasing anticipation of ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’. The album ends with Donna Anna’s demand for vengeance. But what lingers in the mind is the penultimate number, ‘Amarti si vorrei’: an adagio lament with nothing but continuo for accompaniment, the pauses as telling as the intensely shaped phrases.

The conductor could perhaps have made more of the chromatic repeat in ‘Padre, germani’; and including the short recitative that follows the aria means that we end up in the wrong key. But Jan Willem de Vriend and the modern-instrument Stavanger Symphony Orchestra do a good job overall. Forget the less than perfect presentation and enjoy the top-drawer singing.