Five offerings, and four are arrangements. Does it matter? Not historically; adapting music has been common practice down the ages. The Oboe Concerto, K314, the only original work on this disc, was later turned into the Flute Concerto, K314 – by Mozart himself. And it probably pleased him that the likes of Johann Wendt rescored arias from his operas for wind band, brought them on to the streets and made them popular.

Courting popularity this way isn’t, of course, necessary in the age of recording. Consistent artistry is; otherwise a venture of this nature will pall with repetition. It is unlikely to happen here because in terms of tone production alone, François Leleux captures lasting attention. His plangent sound, cuttingly reedy when deemed appropriate, suggests an embouchure not always tightly drawn and pressurised. Notes aren’t tongued sharply, either at the beginnings of phrases or during staccato; they seem to emanate from Leleux’s own breathing, to melt into precise lines. Mix in musicianship of a very refined expressive reach and the instrument becomes the human voice in the arias, or a medium of unimpeded communication elsewhere. Leleux is a pretty good conductor too although the orchestra is inconsistently reproduced, sometimes clearly, sometimes not, with an opaque bass-line dulling the texture.

In 1713 the composer Johann Mattheson described the oboe, an instrument with a long history, as “The Eloquent Hautbois”. And François Leleux, a new addition to a long line of distinguished practitioners, is a most eloquent advocate.