Two well-known cantatas composed in Italy and another devised about a decade later in England are interspersed with the Trio Sonata in G minor (Op 2 No 6, c1707 10) and the Violin Sonata in G minor (Op 1 No 6, c1724), played by Arsenale Sonore with a finely attuned synthesis of imaginative panache and seductive poeticism. Francesca Aspromonte conveys the fluctuating sentiments of a male lover’s palpitating heart and agitated soul beguilingly in Mi palpita il cor, given here in its revised version for soprano prepared in about 1717 18. The Calabrian singer has melancholy infused with sweetness in the siciliano ‘Ho tanti affanni in petto’ and progresses to gleeful optimism when anticipating that one day Clori will return his love (‘S’un dì m’adora la mia crudele’); in both arias Boris Begelman plays Handel’s oboe part on violin instead.

Un’alma innamorata and Tu fedel, tu costante were both copied out by a Roman scribe for Handel’s patron Marquis Ruspoli in summer 1707. Aspromonte and a chamber quartet of players offer refined conversational sorrow about being imprisoned by the chains of tormented love but are equally spot on for the conclusion of Un’alma innamorata, which smirks mischievously that loving more than one person is preferable to the anguish of fidelity. The addition of a few extra violinists in Tu fedel, tu costante lends textural depth in the animated sonata. A forsaken female lover complains that the fickle shepherd Fileno has been pursuing a hundred other women while hypocritically proclaiming his faithfulness to all of them; the jilted woman reels off a list of his other conquests, a remote Arcadian antecedent of Leporello’s catalogue. The tension abates in successive arias of charming tunefulness and springing liveliness, although the final cadence is unduly pulled back.

The programme finishes with a premiere recording of the exceptionally obscure S’un dì m’appaga, an aria written on an unusual paper-type that Handel only used between 1738 and 1741, and which does not belong to a larger parent work. Nobody knows if it ought to be accompanied orchestrally (as in a public theatrical context) or performed by a small chamber group in a domestic manner. Using five violins and assertively fulsome continuo playing, Arsenale Sonoro aim for something in between. This genuine rarity in Handel’s much later and more mature compositional style is given a vivacious and polished account, although Aspromonte’s stratospheric final cadenza is misguided.