Unless I’m mistaken, aside from their 2018 account of Verdi’s Macbeth in its original 1847 version, Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante have not previously ventured so far up the musical timeline with a recording as they have done here with this early Mendelssohn programme of pieces written between the ages of 11 and 18 (1820-27). Mendelssohn’s early style rings with loving fascination for the music of Johann Sebastian and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and of Mozart, so it’s a perfect fit for Biondi and his crack Baroque players. Indeed, from first note to last, you appreciate the extent to which this music feels like the missing link between their habitual Baroque and early Classical stomping ground and the Italian Romanticism of that aforementioned Verdi. Although perhaps Biondi’s greatest achievement here is that even after countless listens I haven’t tired of it, which is not something that I can truthfully say about every album of Mendelssohn string sinfonias and/or early concertos that I’ve reviewed.

In repertoire terms, this is cornucopia of shapes and forms, including a few works that don’t pop up often. Take the Salve regina in B flat for soprano and strings (1824), five minutes of gorgeously light and pure Mozartian devotion, exquisitely brought off here via soprano Monica Piccinini’s silvery, chorister-esque, understated delivery, with lucid support from one-to-a-part strings and fortepianist Paola Poncet. Poncet’s own moment in the spotlight, the Largo and Allegro in D minor for piano and strings (1820), is one of the programme’s shortest pieces at under three minutes, but it’s one of the most impactful, thanks to her own dusky-toned poetic drama and limpid clarity, and a similar degree of multicoloured narrative from the attentive Europa Galante musicians. Their playing is a consistent joy, whether it’s the tender dignity they bring to the central Andante of Sinfonia No 2 in D (1821) or the subtly ardent shaping and gossamer elegance in the Fugue in E flat for string quartet (1827).

I haven’t yet mentioned Biondi himself. This is a profound reading of the Violin Concerto in D minor, moving from an Allegro of dark, razor-edge tension taking you on a proper journey – the jolt he gives you around 7'30", for instance, as suddenly he cuts deeply, vibratolessly into his string – to a neatly racing finale, everyone balancing terseness with tongue-in-cheek humour, while Biondi himself tickles the ear with his sly portamentos and fluid passagework. A peach of a programme.