Anyone attracted to early-18th-century German Baroque music beyond Bach will admire Telemann’s fertile melodiousness and exquisite craftsmanship but Dorothee Mields’s recital reveals some fascinating obscurities that may not be familiar to even fully paid-up aficionados of the startlingly prolific composer. The impenetrable booklet essay fails to do justice to an intelligently planned programme that flows ideally between contrasting musical moods, textures, keys and genres, all played sensitively by L’Orfeo (expertly directed by violinist Michi Gaigg). There are two secular cantatas that both rapturously anticipate the arrival of a lover: Mein Vergnügen wird sich fügen is a delightful miniature in which Mields’s gentle expression that ‘My delight will come and perchance is already here’ is accompanied softly by solo flute and pizzicato strings; the slightly longer multi-movement cantata Die Hoffnung des Wiedersehens expresses similar sentiments in greater detail, and the first aria, ‘Süsse Hoffnung, wenn ich frage’, features gorgeous writing for two bassoons in dialogue with Mields’s sweetly stylish singing. We also hear three arias from the Singspiel Omphale (1724) and six arias written for Telemann’s arrangements of operas by other composers for Hamburg’s Gänsemarkt theatre, including two operas by Keiser and two by Handel; the poignant lament ‘Quillt, ihr überhäuften Zähren’ is far more sophisticated than anything Handel wrote for his juvenile first opera Almira (rearranged by Telemann in 1732). It is hard to think of a better specialist German Baroque soprano than Mields at the moment; her flawless tone, awareness of instrumental interplay, delivery of poetry and shapely phrasing provide nothing but undiluted pleasure.