The proclamation that Cecilia Bartoli ‘continues her Mission to discover the music of Agostino Steffani’ might lead an unsuspecting public to assume nobody of note has recorded Steffani’s Stabat mater before, but the celebrated work sent by the composer in 1728 to London’s recently founded Academy of Ancient Music has been recorded eminently by Gustav Leonhardt (DHM) and Harry Christophers (Coro). Bartoli sings little during this 73-minute collection – and her contributions are the weakest link. It seems odd to assign the star diva’s pinched vowels and restrained timbre to the simple plaintive introduction (‘Stabat mater dolorosa’) instead of a member of the choral ensemble. Franco Fagioli sings in the same unbridled way in his brief solo ‘Quis est homo’ (in fact, it’s hard to tell the countertenor and Bartoli apart); Daniel Behle and Julian Prégardien are clumsy in the tenor duet ‘Inflammatus et accensus’. This anachronistically over-egged performance is exacerbated by an overpoweringly loud choir and adds up to a strange kind of pseudo-Baroque Rossini rather than the stile antico intimacy and contrapuntal refinement Steffani’s music cries out for. Diego Fasolis presents six other shorter works, most written for Munich early in Steffani’s career: the Choir of Radiotelevisione Svizzera is disciplined in the concise yet impressive eight-part Beatus vir and short antiphon Triduanas a Domino but the brass doubling is a fiction invented by Fasolis. Bartoli returns to centre stage for a garish performance of the motet Non plus me ligate.

I Barocchisti achieve subtler refinement in dances and overtures selected from 13 Steffani operas, most of them written for Munich (1681 88) or Hanover (1689 95). The French-style influence from Lully (eg a lovely chaconne from Henrico Leone) proliferates through these masterly compositions, arranged into a pleasingly contoured long suite: five-part strings play with attractive shading in the Sinfonia from Marco Aurelio and a brief Tendre from La superbia d’Alessandro is played beautifully. Tacky castanets in a Passepied from La libertà contenta are an unwelcome intrusion but four trumpets and war-like drums create a splendid din in the clever Ouverture from Niobe.