This completes the series of recordings that explores the smaller works that Handel inserted into his glorious setting of Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast. Two years ago Robert King recorded The Choice of Hercules, which was created for the 1751 revival. The tenor cantata Look down, harmonious Saint (included with King’s Acis and Galatea), was intended as the interlude for the original run in 1736, but was rejected in favour of Cecilia, volgi un sguardo. It is a splendid idea to pair this seldom heard Italian cantata (recorded by Trevor Pinnock for Archiv, 8/87 – nla) with Dryden’s sublime Ode for St Cecilia’s Day that Handel created to fulfil the same function three years later.

This is a mouth-watering performance of Handel’s colourfully gorgeous ode. ‘The trumpets’ loud clangour’ features Crispian Steele-Perkins on fine form, flautist Rachel Brown enchants in ‘The soft complaining flute’, and Jonathan Cohen’s cello solo in ‘What passion cannot Music raise and quell!’ is sweetly inspired. The King’s Consort and Choir perform with perfect juxtaposition of flamboyance and taste, although Pinnock’s landmark recording still has moments of transcendental beauty, such as Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s accompanied recitative ‘From harmony, from heav’nly harmony’. James Gilchrist sings with comparable authority, and his mellifluous contribution to the cantata places him alongside Rolfe Johnson as a Handel tenor of the highest order.

This recording is in a class of its own when it comes to the seemingly effortless, beautiful singing of Carolyn Sampson, now the best British early music soprano by quite some distance. She is sensitively partnered by organist Matthew Halls in the sublime ‘But oh! what art can teach’, which has a breathtaking poignancy. Notwithstanding many agreeable past achievements, King has seldom produced a disc of such outstanding conviction.