For the uncontrived and unalloyed delights of Bach’s oboe-writing, this is a recital of a rare questing elegance. While our ears have become accustomed, in the course of Heinz Holliger’s 50-year playing career, to an ever-greater degree of “period” sensibility in Bach, there are some musicians for whom a lived-in journey of experience provides a fast track to the heart of these Affekt-laden works. The matter of the artisan’s tools here becomes little more than a curiosity, even if one is distinctly aware that the modern oboe encourages distinctive timbral reflexes, such as consistency of colour rather than the variety of intonation of a “Baroque” oboe. Perhaps this will appear a little disorienting to younger listeners, since Holliger is no observant mannerist and at times even an anti-stylist. Certainly there is not a drip of sentimentality.

He judiciously loops in and out of the dialogue of the C minor Concerto for oboe and violin, takes a patrician distance in the profoundly moving Sinfonia to both cantatas (BWV12 almost unbearably poignant) and encourages the robust Camerata Bern to muscle in on the action, especially in the finales of the four concertos. The ubiquitous Marcello is stripped of its formulaic signposts: the curvature of the Bach-embellished middle movement has never sounded so effortless – and yet he identifies only with what pleases him in the gestural world of “period” performance. A masterclass on several levels.

But this is no hair-shirt experience. The deft, yielding rubatos in the slow movements afford an irresistible warmth which provide a compelling foil to the directional focus and visceral originality of the playing, especially in the A major Oboe d’amore Concerto and D minor reconstruction. You could quibble at the lack of soft-edged radiance in the former (and the last movement is a bit ploddy) but this is music-making which can only ravish in its undimmed personality and artistic ambition.