This is the first disc in what promises to be a recording of all six of Haydn’s ‘Paris’ Symphonies, coupled with other works supposedly performed during the same period by the same organisation, the Concert Spirituel. Such contextualisation puts one in mind of Giovanni Antonini’s continuing Haydn cycle for Alpha, scheduled for completion in 2032, which places the symphonies alongside pieces (by Haydn himself and others) that are chosen to show them in a new light.

Julien Chauvin has come up with a trio of gems: a turbulent Sturm und Drang symphony by Henri-Joseph Rigel and extended showpiece arias by Giuseppe Sarti and JC Bach. The Rigel is certainly a tour de force, its tempos and rhythms tautly wound and its dark C minor colouring inviting a language replete with plenty of dissonance and agitation. It most reminded me of Kraus’s symphony in the same key but without quite the instant memorability of that work or any number of Haydn’s own Sturm und Drang symphonies. It’s played with bags of verve, in a more open acoustic than the only other recording I know (by Concerto Köln in 2008), and with the all-important horns encouraged to make the most of their parts.

The two arias appear to have been performed as showpieces in Paris in the 1780s and ’90s. Sarti’s is a faintly oriental-sounding concoction with fruity oboe and bassoon obbligatos, while the ‘London’ Bach’s is a thoroughly virtuoso coloratura number with a challenging, chattering flute part, showstoppingly sung and played by Sandrine Piau with flautist Tami Krausz. In among it all, it makes you wonder whether Mozart had in mind Bach’s accompanied cadenza when he came to compose the ‘Incarnatus’ of his C minor Mass.

The Haydn is the main attraction, of course, and is given a performance of infectious vitality in the modern-historical style: the slow movement is not slow (although not as fast as Norrington takes it – Sony Classical, 7/15) and neither is the Menuetto, but the finale bounces along at a fine clip, and the opening movement is full of the stately charm it requires – not to mention being far better played than a near-simultaneous release of the same symphony from Les Arts Florissants